I have said this about Evgeny Kuznetsov a ton of times. When he is at the top of his game, and when he gives 100% effort, there are not many NHL players who are better. When number 92 is going, to me, he is clearly and easily a top ten player in the entire hockey world.
The problem with him is that over the last two or three seasons you cannot count on Kuznetsov to give you that effort. To call a player great he simply cannot be as invisible as he tends to be and as often as he tends to be.
That was or is a problem he has had throughout his career, it’s just been much worse in recent seasons. It got worse and worse for Kuznetsov, until last season he seemed to hit that proverbial rock bottom.
Last season he played in 41 games and was only able to put up 29 points. If he had played in a full season he would have scored around 47 points. Keep in mind he missed 15 games in the shortened 2021 season, so a full season for him would have been 67 games, not 82.
Most nights, unless you were specifically looking for Kuznetsov, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed he was playing. I promise, I’m not over exaggerating when I say most nights.
It was that kind of play that put Kuznetsov in the headlines almost all summer. At certain points it seemed the odds of him remaining with the Washington Capitals was 50/50 at best. The Caps management for one reason or another decided to keep the highly talented center, and Kuznetsov, seemingly rejuvenated, has come out flying to start the 2021-22 season.
Six games into this season he already has a third of the points he scored in all of last season. He currently has 9 points. Scoring is just one thing though. Kuznetsov has enough talent that when he is sleep walking through a season he can still put up a good amount of points. There are a ton of NHL players who wish they could score nearly 50 points in a full year. Again, Kuznetsov was on pace for that while giving very little effort.
The best part about him to start this season is the eye test. We’re going to look at numbers in a second, but no number can point out how good Kuznetsov has looked on the ice. If you watch the games you will easily be able to tell the difference between the Kuznetsov from 2018-2021 and this years edition.
Lets go ahead and take a look at some numbers. We’ll start with last seasons numbers. (Note that these numbers are 5v5 unless stated otherwise)
Corsi % – 51.26%
Scoring Chance For % – 52.76%
High Danger Attempts % – 53.85%
Shots (all situations) – 78
Individual Scoring Chances – 46
Individual High Danger Attempts – 23
With those numbers fresh in your head lets just go ahead and jump right into this seasons numbers.
Corsi % – 55.22%
Scoring Chance For % – 56.79%
High Danger Attempts % – 55.17%
Shots (all situations) – 20
Individual Scoring Chances – 14
Individual High Danger Attempts – 8
As you can see, these numbers aren’t that much better. They’re better for sure, but they don’t point out the night and day difference that you can see on the ice. On thing we can look at is those bottom three numbers and we can break those down a little more to point out how much better he is doing early this season.
Shots Per Game
Last season – 1.90
This season – 3.33
Individual chances per game
Last season – 1.12
This season – 2.33
Individual high danger attempts
Last season – .5
This season – 1.33
So far this year Kuznetsov is nearly, or in fact, doubling up those numbers. His 8 individual high danger attempts actually leads the entire Capitals team.
To start this season, he is giving effort, he’s skating well, he’s shooting the puck, he’s getting to scoring areas, he’s creating chances, and that’s of course leading to goals and him putting up more points.
After being on pace for the worst season of his career he is now on pace for the best season of his career. Right now he has 9 points in 6 games. If he stays on that pace he will score over 120 points for the year.
https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1451976556264542224
I tend to think that won’t happen, only the absolute best can seemingly get over 120, like a Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby and even Nikita Kucherov a couple of seasons ago. Maybe Kuznetsov puts himself in that conversation after this year? Who knows. But the way he’s played, if he can keep it up, 100 points shouldn’t be a hope, it should actually be an expectation. If he did get into triple digits it would be the first time in his career he would have done that. His career high up to this point is 83 which he scored in 2017-18. Not so coincidentally that Capitals won the Cup that year when he was actually playing well.
I’ve called Kuznetsov a top ten player for years now. Effort was the only thing holding him back from that being the truth. This season, so far, he is playing with tremendous effort. If he keeps this up, it won’t only be rewarding himself with his best season ever, it could lead to him rewarding the entire Capitals team with some hardware at the end of the season.