Ask any hockey player about his recent scoring tear and he’ll almost certainly tell you he’s not doing much different from usual, but the pucks are just finding the net at the moment. Similarly, ask a player on a drought and he’ll tell you the pucks just aren’t going in for him.
Don’t take my word for it.
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“Sometimes you just kind of get lucky,” Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said on Nov. 21 following his third three-point game of the month. “Sometimes, you go through spells where you get nothing, and sometimes you get the bounces.”
There are so many variables in hockey, and accounting for them paints a more accurate representation of what’s happening on the ice. Through just more than one quarter of the season, it seems like a good time to examine which Golden Knights players the puck seems to be bouncing in for, and which ones have had no luck at all.
To do this, we’ll compare each player’s shooting percentage and goals above expected to their career averages. While they can obviously develop and improve skills, a player shooting considerably above his career average is a prime candidate to regress as the season goes along. Conversely, players shooting far below their career averages are also not likely to do that for an entire season and are good candidates for progression.
The goals above expected numbers are equally important, because unlike shooting percentages, they take into account the quality of the shots. If a player is simply generating more dangerous chances than in previous seasons, that would raise their shooting percentage but might not necessarily mean their production should drop off.
As a team, the Golden Knights haven’t been particularly lucky or unlucky when it comes to goals to this point. They rank right near the middle of the pack (16th) with minus-1.13 goals scored above expected. In other words, they’ve scored on par with what’s to be expected based on the quality of offensive chances they’ve generated.
Without further ado, here are the three Vegas players most likely to see their offensive numbers regress closer to their career averages in the final three quarters of the season:
Reilly Smith
Smith is currently second on the team in shooting percentage with a sky-high 16.1 percent. That’s four percentage points higher than his 12.1 percent average over the first 11 seasons of his NHL career.
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With 10 goals, Smith is second on the team behind only Jack Eichel (11). That puts him on pace for 34 goals in 82 games. He scored 16 last year, and has never scored more than 27. He also has the highest goals above expected on the Golden Knights, at 2.8.
Some players regularly outscore their expected goals numbers because they have exceptional shooting skills (Eichel and Mark Stone are two examples), but Smith isn’t one of them. While he’s a great, well-rounded player who helps the Golden Knights in nearly every facet of the game, Smith rarely out-performs his expected goals. He’s finished with negative goals above expected each of the past two seasons, and in three of the last four. Now suddenly leading the team in goals above expected, he seems unlikely to maintain this pace for 82 games.
William Carrier
This name shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Carrier is already only one goal shy of his career-high with eight. He’s scored on 15.4 percent of his shots – more than double his career shooting percentage of 7.6 percent. For reference, Alex Ovechkin’s highest shooting percentage for an entire season is 15.4 percent.
There’s no doubt that Carrier’s offensive skills have improved, but maintaining one of the highest shooting percentages on the team after six years of being a below-average finisher his entire career seems unlikely.
Expect Carrier’s overall strong play to continue. He’s been one of the biggest drivers of Vegas’ early-season success with his strong play on the fourth line, but his scoring will almost certainly cool off.
Keegan Kolesar
This is an interesting one. Kolesar has scored on 15.8 percent of his shots. That’s definitely not going to last, but that inflated shooting percentage is the result of him taking only 19 shots.
Kolesar’s three goals this year are right in line with his expected goals, suggesting they are the result of increased scoring chances and not just good fortune. Kolesar’s scoring chances and high-danger chances per 60 minutes are both well above his averages from a season ago. In his second full season in the NHL, he’s looking more and more comfortable with the puck on his stick.
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Unlike Smith and Carrier, who are well-established veterans, Kolesar is still somewhat new to the league and therefore has a higher chance for development in his game. So, while the numbers point to a scoring regression, there’s reason to believe he can maintain this pace and easily surpass his career high of seven goals, assuming he increases his shot volume.
Now, here are three Golden Knights players who have been on the opposite side of fortune and could be due for a scoring surge.
Brett Howden
Howden has the lowest shooting percentage of any forward on the team at 4.8 percent. That is well below his career average of 11.3 percent, and it’s not the only metric that screams that Howden is due for goals. He also leads the team in goals scored below expected (2.0).
At even strength, Howden ranks seventh on the Golden Knights with 34 scoring chances, and fifth on the team with 19 high-danger chances, but has only one goal in 21 games. He’s not an elite finisher – coach Bruce Cassidy has even mentioned he needs to work on his shooting accuracy – but he’s definitely better than what he’s shown to this point.
Howden is currently out of the lineup with a lower-body injury that doesn’t seem to be too serious. When he returns, expect a scoring boost over the remainder of the season.
Alec Martinez
Of the 19 Vegas skaters with at least 14 games of action this season, only two are still without a goal: Alec Martinez and Brayden McNabb.
For McNabb, it’s not overly surprising. The bruising, stay-at-home defenseman has averaged only 2.3 goals per season over the first 10 years of his career. Martinez, on the other hand, has 76 career goals and has broken into double digits in a single season twice. Under Cassidy’s system, Martinez has become far less aggressive offensively, and actually averages the fewest shots per 60 minutes of any player on the team (2.95).
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Don’t expect Martinez to suddenly become a scorer, but it’s certainly reasonable to expect him to find the back of the net a handful of times before the season ends. He’s second on the team behind Howden in goals scored below expected (1.2).
Jonathan Marchessault
No player in franchise history has scored more consistently than Marchessault, who has broken the 20-goal barrier in every full season for the Golden Knights. The only exception was 2020-21, when he scored 18 goals in 56 games (an 82-game pace of 26).
It’s not as if Marchessault has struggled to score this season, either. He’s tied for fourth on the team with eight goals. But based on his underlying metrics, he could score even more over the next 58 games. His current shooting percentage of 9.6 is slightly below his career average (10.7) and he’s the only top-six forward on the team with a shooting percentage below 10.
Marchessault currently leads the Golden Knights in shot attempts (145), and is second in shots on goal (83) and scoring chances (73). Based on his career averages and the volume of shots he’s getting in this offense, he should easily soar past the 20-goal mark once again and approach 30.
All stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and MoneyPuck.
(Top photo of Reilly Smith: Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Today)
