Toronto Maple Leafs: Why 5v5 Production Is More Important than Power-Play Production

Should Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player?

Yesterday, I wrote that he should.  To make my point I suggested that the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise player had been the best player in the NHL this season because of his 5v5 production.

In order to make my case, I pointed out that he was the league’s best 5v5 goal scorer, and that he had the same amount of primary points at 5v5 as NHL points leader Leon Draisaitl.

Furthermore I showed how, at 5v5, Matthews led all candidates in puck possession, scoring chance creation and expected goals.  He also had the lowest on-ice shooting percentage of candidates (which means he’s not padding his stats with as many random secondary assists).

As the best defensive player among realistic candidates, and as by far the best 5v5 performer, I believe he should be the unanimous choice to win the Hart Trophy.

Most people aren’t willing to take the conversation beyond the NHL’s points leader, and when it’s a 30 point difference, I see their point.

Whether or not I’m correct about Matthews, the conversation surrounding the Hart Trophy yesterday illustrated some disconnect between nerdy people like me (who write about hockey for a living and thus have time to learn about all the advanced stats your average fan could care less about), and normal hockey fans.

So what I’ll do here today is to try and explain a concept  I may have mistakenly believed everyone is up to date on. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

Why Is 5v5 More Important Than the Power-Play?

In the NHL, it’s a lot easier to score on the power-play than at 5v5.  But roughly 80% of the game takes place 5v5.

There really isn’t a lot of correlation between power-play success and team success.  Teams that do better during 5v5 play than other teams are far more successful.  This makes sense, since you’ll play only 10% of the time on the power-play, compared to 80% of the time 5v5.

Since teams win games due to strong 5v5 play, we should therefore weight 5v5 play more heavily than PP time when evaluating individual players.

Besides the relative importance of 5v5 play, there is the matter of repeatability.  Repeatability is a measurement of whether or not what you did can be repeated,  or if you just got lucky.

Studies show that 5v5 primary points (goals and first assists) have a high probability for being repeated compared to power-play points and secondary assists, which do not.  This would strongly suggest that a player whose points are mostly at even-strength will perform better in the future than one who is racking up PP points.

Finally, when we look at the difference between 5v5 and power play goals, there is one more thing we must talk about.  Auston Matthews is the best 5v5 goal scorer over almost four seasons since he entered the NHL.  If you gave his ice time to another player, they would not score the amount of goals that Matthews does.

But on the power-play, where there is extra room to maneuver, the separation between players becomes smaller.  Other players can’t do what elite players do 5v5, but they can match them on the power-play where everyone has a lot of extra room.

A random player taking Matthew’s power-play time would likely score close to as many points as he does, because the extra room levels out the skill advantage Matthews usually hold over other players.

An example of this can be seen by the fact that over the last three seasons, Neal Pionk and David Perron score more points per minute on the PP than either Matthews or Draistaitl.

To go back to the MVP argument, Draisaitl has 30 more points than Matthews does overall, but if we look at only 5v5 primary points, Matthews and Draisaitl are tied.  Matthews has eight more goals.

Additionally, Matthews underlying numbers are just way, way better than Draisaitl’s at even strength.  Since 80% of the game is played at 5v5, we can easily see how Matthews helps his team win games far more than Draisaitl does.

Power-play points are nice, but the true measure of a player’s performance comes from how he does during the 80% of time when teams have the same amount of players on the ice.

The 30 point gap in points between Auston Matthews and Leon Draisaitl comes from secondary assists (random, not repeatable) and power-play points (any reasonable replacement of Draisatl on Edmonton’s power-play would likely produce similar results).

The fact that Matthews is the better 5v5 player (indisputable) should outweigh the gaudy point totals that Daisaitl has put up.  When it comes to voting, it will not.  But it should.