A few years ago, Zach Hyman was a league leader in shots on net from the inner slot per 20 minutes at 5-vs-5, playing with Auston Matthews and William Nylander in Matthews’ first year in the league. Despite being the recipient of a ridiculous number of quality set ups, Hyman managed the league’s worst conversion rate on those shots, and an abysmal 6.4 per cent shooting percentage overall.
A lack of conversion with that level of quality chances and only a modest improvement the following year had me thinking that Hyman was playing in a spot that he wasn’t talented enough to be in. But this year those chances are finally paying off, and he’s leading the league in shooting percentage.
Percentages giveth and taketh away, but a player proving you wrong is always fun when they’re doing it by performing better than expectations.
SPOTLIGHT PERFORMANCE
Hyman’s 21 per cent conversion rate this season has seen him match his career-high of 21 goals from last season in 23 fewer games. His point production is up across the board, but it’s the shooting that looks the most sustainable compared to what he’s actually doing on the ice.
In the third straight season of his shooting percentage rising, Hyman is looking like a lot more than simply an aggressive forechecker that forces opponents into more mistakes to benefit his teammates. It seems like his hands are finally catching up with his head, completing the plays he’s always found himself in good position to be on the receiving end of.
To understand what kind of quality Hyman is bringing to his shooting, let’s compare him to every other forward who has played 500 or more minutes at 5-vs-5 this season, in two areas that have significant impact on shooting percentage.
Contrasting inner slot shots on net per 20 minutes with the percentage of total shots taken as one-timers, Hyman ends up in a pretty exclusive club of high-end chance producers, and hilariously his closest data point slightly to the left is none other than Alex Ovechkin.
That isn’t to say Hyman is suddenly going to keep this pace and score 30 to 35 goals for the next few seasons, but the good work that creates goals has always been there for him, he’s just never been able to complete those plays at the league average rate.
This season’s league-leading shooting percentage is very likely to be an aberration, but this is now two seasons in a row where Hyman is shooting above league average, and when you combine that with the ability to get good chances for himself, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he manages to stay a top-six level offensive contributor at 5-vs-5 going forward.
What’s interesting about Hyman this season is that he isn’t really being propped up directly by his high-quality linemates either. Hyman records the 12th-most inner slot shots on net per minute among all forwards with 500 or more minutes played at 5-vs-5 this season, and the 52nd highest percentage of his shots are one-timers.
With a high number of one-timers you might expect that Hyman is receiving a ton of great passes, but he only receives the 157th-most passes in the slot among that same peer group with 539, which is good but not exemplary like, say, Jake Guentzel who receives more than anyone else in the league.
Hyman is getting those chances by pouncing on rebounds and mistakes by the opposition after applying forecheck pressure. Playing with the likes of Matthews and Mitch Marner absolutely helps, but make no mistake, Hyman is creating his fair share of chances for himself.
THE QUESTION
This week Steve Dangle is wondering what’s in the water in Philadelphia, with the Flyers currently the hottest team in the league.
“The Flyers feel like the most disrespected team in the league. At the beginning of the season I thought they were mediocre but they’re quietly one of the league’s hottest teams and running up the Metro rankings. What’s putting the spice in their chilli?”
What’s going on with the Flyers right now is pretty crazy. Since the calendar turned to 2020 only the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins have accumulated more points than they have. My first thought was that maybe they’ve been great all season long and they’re regressing to the mean, but when I added up the numbers that wasn’t the case.
My next thought was to look at what they’ve done since they got red hot, but unfortunately that didn’t yield the result I was expecting either.
Looking at both the full season long and only the new year, the Flyers are a relatively strange team that doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to as good as their record of late, but also isn’t just bad and lucky.
The Flyers are pretty good at controlling shots from the slot, especially from the inner slot, but the bigger the sample size the less good they are. They’re a very good rush team and have been getting progressively better as the season has gone on, but they get murdered off the cycle.
Off the forecheck the Flyers are decent and getting better, and have improved in that area by reducing chances both for and against in 2020, but they’re losing control of the passing game at even strength, and they were already not great when it comes to slot passes.
If you were going to choose two areas of the game to have control of, those two would likely be chosen between inner slot shots, rush chances, and slot passes, and the Flyers have controlled two of those three at decent clips. But they’re not blowing anyone away either, at least by the underlying numbers.
Overall the Flyers look like a good team with some very exploitable flaws, which is about what you would expect for most teams that are on the edge of the playoff picture, but the Flyers have put themselves in a position to not only take home ice in the first round, but to steal the division lead from the Washington Capitals.
As uninteresting as it may be, the Flyers are simply a good even-strength team with above average but not spectacular special teams, and decent goaltending in Carter Hart, and they’re scoring way more goals right now than they probably should be.
[relatedlinks]
QUICK HITS
I feel like this is picking on the Flyers a little bit, but as great as Sean Couturier has been this season, I think the comparisons to Patrice Bergeron are not exactly accurate for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being individual statistics that aren’t available in public data.
As he usually does, Patrice Bergeron is once again leading all forwards in successful defensive touches this season (pass blocks, shot blocks, stick checks, and body checks) with 9.44 every 20 minutes of ice time. By comparison, Couturier ranks 144th with 6.83. Slice that down to the defensive zone and Bergeron is once again first with 4.52, and Couturier is 118th with 2.83.
Couturier compares better in loose puck recoveries with 20.3 to Bergeron’s 21.8, which is the difference between 26th place and fourth in the league among forwards.
On-Ice differentials favour Bergeron slightly as well. I get the appetite to anoint the next great Selke winner, but looking at what each player does individually to create their defensive impact, I’m not seeing a handing of the torch at the moment.
