Zach Hyman

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

36 goals and 47 assists in 79 games — 83 points, a career high by 29 — plus-13, 20:09 a night, 276 shots at 13.0 per cent.

55.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 87th percentile, with his ice at 79-65 against an expectation of 69.57-56.18. Nine better than the chances at one end and nine worse at the other.

Eight seasons, 500 games, 322 points. He had never scored more than 27 before arriving in Edmonton.

The Finesse Game

276 shots at a median of 12 feet — 67 per cent from inside twenty and 6 per cent from beyond forty. That is among the closest median shot distances of any forward in this book, and it is not close: Joe Pavelski, the most extreme net-front player in the league by reputation, sits at 16.

Inside forty: 259 shots on goal, 35 goals, 13.51 per cent. Beyond forty: 17 shots, one.

The shot-type record is the explanation: 43 tip-ins, 49 backhands and 44 snap shots out of 276 attempts. Nearly a third of everything he put on net was either redirected or taken on his backhand, which describes a man standing in the blue paint for two hours a week.

91.0 mph at the 51st percentile. Entirely irrelevant at twelve feet.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 206. 22.9 mph at the 84th percentile and 2.4 bursts over twenty a game at the 91st, on 2.77 miles a game at the 65th.

He is quicker than the reputation and the bursts are the reason he can forecheck first and still be in front of the net when the puck arrives.

39 penalty minutes in 79 games. He takes far more punishment than he gives and the goals are the receipt: 35 of them from a place where a defenceman is entitled to cross-check him.

He has played 76 or more games in each of his two Edmonton seasons.

The Intangibles

123rd overall in 2010 — a fifth-round pick — out of Michigan, where he led the country in scoring, and five Toronto years spent as the forechecker on somebody else’s line.

He signed in Edmonton at 29 for seven years and has scored 27 and 36. Playing with McDavid is the obvious explanation and it is only half of one: the tip-ins and the backhands are his, and no linemate creates 43 deflections.

He has also written children’s books, which is a fact this book has no metric for and records anyway.