Red Wings @ Leafs - Nov. 22nd, 7:00pm - CBC, TSN 1050

[GhostofPotvin29]

Wow,  I wish the Leafs had a 1st line center who can win faceoffs, etc. 

This is sarcasm right?

Bozak FO%59
Also with a SHG.

Yeah, sorry.  I usually put a sarcasm tag.  I just am surprised/tired of how much pundits link Bozak's success ONLY to playing with Kessel. Bozak is a strong skater as shown in the SHG last night with Kronwall chasing him, he has soft hands and has one of the top faceoff % in the league.  All for $4.2 MIL.

So is your argument that his success shouldn't be linked to Kessel due to being good at face-offs and being a strong skater?  At this point even Bozak's parents probably attribute a lot of his success to playing with Kessel.

There's no doubt he benefits from playing with Kessel, anyone would.

Not to knock what is a great year for him, but I feel he could easily have another 5-7 goals (easy ones too) where he's been unprepared/unlucky which would put him close to the scoring lead....

I feel like his points right now are a bit of an illusion - he's got only about half his points at even-strength.  It's fine right now, but going forward you'd like to see that percent be a lot higher since the majority of the game is even-strength situations.

But really how rare is that among players who get #1 PP time?

Some players with 50% or more of their pts on the PP this year:

Malkin, Crosby and Stamkos (both 1 pt under),Pavelski, Couture, Karlsson, Letang, Marleau, Brock Nelson,Phanuef,Ryan, Nyquist, Steen and seemingly on and on.

Good players score a bunch on the PP it seems. Would it be nice if he scored more ES goals? Sure, but as it stands this team needs people to get pucks in the net (G or A that lead to them). Bozak's done exactly that so far.

Don't have time to look up all of those, but for example Crosby scored 37% of his points on the PP last season.  Last season Kessel was 26th among fwds in PP points but they were only 25% of his total.  Bozak - 16%!

Last season Bozak performed very well offensively at ES - 25th among fwds with 500 mins in P/60 at 5v5.

Early in the season (especially with Pittsburgh's PP having insane %'s) it will skew - which is why I said going forward you'd like to see your #1 C contributing offensively much more at even-strength than the PP (especially since you can reasonably expect his PP output to level off somewhat).

But you mention some of those other guys, well it's a lot harder to compare them to Bozak.  From 2011-14 Crosby has 3.29 P/60 at 5v5, Stamkos 2.59, etc.  Now these are superstars so that's why I say it's hard to compare them.

From 2011-14 Bozak in a ranking of 5v5 points/60 ranks 100th out of forwards who have played at least 1000 minutes over that time at 5v5 with 1.84 P/60 (JVR is 70th at 1.90, Kessel is 10th at 2.40 & Kadri 41st at 2.13).  Bozak's closest comparables on that list are Artem Anisimov, Jiri Tlusty, David Desharnais, Michael Ryder, Nicklas Backstrom, Tyler Johnson, David Perron and Frans Nielsen.

Obviously Nicklas Backstrom is very good, but he and Ovechkin appear to be outliers of some sort - Backstrom had more PP points than ES last season and Ovechkin was very close.  But maybe that's an issue for their team as well.

Basically what I'm saying is that even if Bozak's offensive totals look nice right now and Kadri's don't, I think both are illusory based on their play so far this season.  I don't think Bozak has been as good as his #'s indicate and I don't think Kadri has been as bad as his do.  I think Bozak's history suggests that he overall doesn't really perform as a #1 C at ES (I think he did last season).

It's still early.  This could be completely different by April.  But I can't yet see into the future so I can only comment on what's gone on so far and compare it to what's gone on previously.