Editor’s note: Here’s an article from our friend Pat Holden, who texts me every time he encounters the number 69 in real life.
Tom Wilson has been on fire since coming back from suspension. In just eight games Wilson has posted six goals and six assists.
It’s safe to say that Wilson won’t continue at a 62-goal pace for the rest of the season. This isn’t a knock on Wilson, who is playing fantastic; it’s just that he won’t maintain a pace that even the best goal scorers in the league can hardly accomplish in today’s NHL. Still, it’s worth considering that perhaps Wilson has made changes to his game that help explain the uptick in offensive production.
First, let’s look at the rates that Wilson generates individual shots and scoring chances.
| Season | Individual Shot Attempts/60 | Individual Scoring Chances/60 |
|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | 9.0 | 5.3 |
| 2014-15 | 12.0 | 6.5 |
| 2015-16 | 12.2 | 7.3 |
| 2016-17 | 10.2 | 5.7 |
| 2017-18 | 11.7 | 7.1 |
| 2018-19 | 10.1 | 8.1 |
Wilson is creating scoring chances at a higher rate this season, but overall we don’t see a big change in the amount of offense Wilson is generating, production notwithstanding.
But last season brought about a major change in Wilson’s deployments, as he became a permanent fixture in the Washington top six. This clearly is helping with the improvement in Wilson’s production, but it’s worth looking into if there’s an accompanying uptick in shots and scoring chances. Here are Wilson’s numbers in the top-six since last season.
| Season | Individual Shot Attempts/60 | Individual Scoring Chances/60 |
|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 10.8 | 6.5 |
| 2018-19 | 10.1 | 8.1 |
Again, there isn’t a huge difference in terms of individual offense rates between top-six Wilson and fourth line Wilson. Though we should note that Wilson has gradually gotten better at crashing the net.
| Season | Average Shot Distance (feet) |
|---|---|
| 2015-16 | 29.6 |
| 2016-17 | 28.4 |
| 2017-18 | 27.4 |
| 2018-19 | 26.7 |
Still, the underlying numbers don’t suggest much of a change in Wilson’s offensive game. So, it’s fair to point out that much of his production this season is percentage-driven, seeing as he’s shooting 28.6 percent, well above his career conversion rate of 8.5 percent.
Good luck and some savvy net-front tip-ins will do that for you, as this shot map from Sean Tierney illustrates.
But the point here isn’t that Wilson’s production isn’t sustainable. As I said at top, no one really thinks Wilson is a 60-plus goal scorer in a full NHL season.
The point is that Wilson isn’t a drastically different player from the one we saw last season, despite his monstrous production through his first eight games. And that’s not a criticism of Wilson. After all, last season he established himself as a legitimate top-six forward, and one the Caps think is worth $5.1 million per season.
Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong
