Washington Capitals: Evgeny Kuznetsov Is On Pace For A Down Season
By CJ Witt
Evgeny Kuznetsov has registered six points through his first ten games of the season. Honestly, that isn’t too bad. Considering the weirdness of the times, this season and the fact that he was forced to miss a bunch of games thanks to Covid protocol.
I can’t even say that he has been playing bad. But facts are facts. And right now the facts are Kuznetsov is on pace for one of his worst seasons as an NHL player.
Kuznetsov is on pace for somewhere around 26 points if he were to play all the remaining games for the Washington Capitals. That’s obviously a very low number but you also have to acknowledge the shortened season.
He is currently averaging .6 points a game. If he did that during an 82 game regular season he would be on pace for about 49 points. That would be his lowest point total since his first full season in Washington where he scored 37 points in 80 games.
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Do all of Kuznetsov’s numbers tell us he is having a bad season? No, they don’t. They actually tell us he is having a better season than last season when he scored 52 points in just 63 games. That season he was averaging .82 points a game and would have scored 67 points in an 82 game season.
Last season Kuznetsov had some pretty ugly advanced numbers. He was either at the very bottom, or near the bottom in a lot of the important stats some people like to look at. Lets look at Kuznetsov’s numbers and show you where they ranked on the team last season.
A quick note here, 27 players skated for the Capitals last season. So every number will be out of 27 guys.
CF% – 45.09 – 26th
SCF% – 46.72 – 24th
HDCF% – 44.51 – 24th
xGF% – 45.06 – 24th
Just to make 100% sure everyone can follow this we’ll point this out. CF is Corsi% or shot attempts, SCF is scoring chances, HD is high danger attempts and xGF is expected goals for. You want all of those numbers to be over 50%, the higher the better.
Those are some of those ugly numbers I mentioned earlier. So far this season his numbers are much better. Lets do the same thing by looking at the number and his rank on the team.
CF% – 55.26 – 4th
SCF% – 50.85 – 12th
HDCF% – 60.87 – 3rd
xGF% – 58.69 – 2nd
All of those numbers are good, some of them even entering the great category. This is also when you will have advanced stats deniers come out and say these numbers don’t mean anything and point out how he was better at scoring when his numbers were down.
I would also like to point out that last season Kuznetsov was on the ice for 45 goals for and 44 goals against while 5v5. So far this season he has been on the ice for 7 goals for and just 1 goal against.
My point there is simple. I would rather have Kuznetsov have the advanced numbers he has now and trust that he has the skill (which he does) and the desire (that is the question on a lot of nights) to improve his production than have bad advanced numbers and have teams score or get a bunch of chances against him and his line.
His goals and points might not look great right now. His underlying numbers though do look pretty good. I think Kuznetsov has the skill to get his production going. If his current advanced numbers stay the same or drop just a little I think the production will rise in time.
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While he is currently on pace for some below average numbers for him maybe just give him some time. He may just need some time to catch back up to the game. I think the points will come.