By The Numbers: Analyzing the Jets early struggles at forward

Suffice it to say, the Jets struggled thus far this season in many areas. The normally average-to-strong shot metrics is a new one for the Jets.

To determine why, we compare how each of the Jets performed relative to their historic norm.

In this article, we investigate the Jets’ forwards.

We use team performance with player on ice relative to the team with the player on the bench to diminish the impact of the team performing worse overall.

Off the start we see the forwards align far more chaotic-like than the defenders. Chris Thorburn, Andrew Copp, Marko Dano, and Nikolaj Ehlers are the only players who are not rookies and have similar performance to their historical norm.

For the most part the extremes will likely regress somewhat. Wheeler, Armia, and Petan performed exceptionally but will unlikely stay that high. Adam Lowry already started regressing heavily towards his career norm. Kyle Connor and Patrik Laine struggled in the two-way numbers department, but are rookies who will likely follow a steep learning curve as they acclimatize to the NHL.

Mark Scheifele has struggled with the Jets leaning overly on him with Bryan Little and Matthieu Perreault injuries. Luckily Little has already returned and Perreault should as well. While both of these centres have struggled recently, they should return somewhat to their historical norm and relieve Scheifele of his duties.

The Alexander Burmistrov data may be a bit misleading. While Burmistrov’s overall career numbers are much better, his numbers since his time in the KHL have typically been poor.

I placed the Jets two new players on a separate graph for two reasons. They do not have much of a sample set this season and also they do not have any Jet history to compare with but they do have history in the NHL. They have performed well thus far, but it is unlikely to continue to that extreme.

Twenty five games and the Jets have not performed the best. They are 24th in standings points per game played, 24th in adjusted-Corsi percentage, and 19th by DTMAboutHeart‘s expected goal model.

The Jets normally have been around average out shooting team, and in their playoff season they were an elite outshooting team, but since then there biggest strength has failed them. Hopefully some players returning can improve upon things.