Oct 10, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Maple Leafs center Nazem Kadri (43) takes a shot on goal as Ottawa Senators goalie Craig Anderson (41) saves and center Jean-Gabriel Pageau (44) moves in from behind in the first period at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Peter Llewellyn-USA TODAY Sports
Nazem Kadri – C+
Finally given the keys to the Leafs (admittedly thin) offense and had all of Leafs Nationally expecting him to break out and put up good, possibly No.1 Center worthy scoring numbers.
Well, with only 2 goals and 8 points through 22 games played, he hasn’t done that – yet. However, according to Babcock, Kadri has been the teams best player most nights and has improved his defensive and overall game substantially.
He is now 2nd in the league for Penalty Differential – how many penalties a players draws vs how many he takes over a 60 minute same size – with 2.8, behind only Anton Lander and well ahead of any of top 6 forward.
He is also tied for 5th in the NHL for shots on goal, but with only 2 goals, is scoring at a career worst 2.3 shooting percentage, for reference he is usually around 11-13% career wise.
Nazem Kadri has been massively snake bitten, as his terrible 971 PDO* is second only to line mate JVR’s 962.
*see BehindTheNet‘s explanation below:
"“PDO is the sum of “On-Ice Shooting Percentage” and “On-Ice Save Percentage” while a player was on the ice. It regresses very heavily to the mean in the long-run: a team or player well above 1000 has generally played in good luck and should expect to drop going forward and vice-versa.”"
All of this means that Nazem Kadri is due for a bit of a breakout in scoring, that could happen any time now. It also means that Kadri, despite not putting up massive scoring numbers, has become a 200ft player and really refined his game in the other areas of the ice. A C+ feels low for Nazem Kadri considering how integral to the Leafs recent success he has been, but I’ll allow it for now based purely on his lack of pure point production.
Next: What Fate Awaits Reimer And Bernier In Toronto?
All in all Craig Button has done a pretty good job of breaking down the Leafs and their players over the first 20 or so games of their season. The team as a whole has exceeded most pundits lowly expectations, and after the whole Babcock situation, we all know anything is possible with this team.
Make sure to give the full list and rankings a read over at TSN here and as usual if you have any comments, concerns about my mental well-being or general hockey discussion, feel free to leave it below in the comment thread, or shoot me a message on Twitter @TorrinBatchelor