On Nico Hischier and the definition of "production"

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Today’s post was written by C.J. TURTORO. You can find C.J. on Twitter @CJTDevil.

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On Thursday I DMed blog daddy, Todd, to ask him what he wanted me to write about and he said, and I quote: 

Ah, freedom! I don’t do so well with freedom so I just left it to my Twitter followers to tell me what they wanted to see me write about. I got 12 responses from interested parties and one obnoxious dad screaming from the bleachers…

Also, he’s reading this right now because he’s the editor. Hi, Todd! You’re welcome.

In his defense, it’s a topic others asked for and it’s a topic that probably needs broached relatively frequently to keep the haters at bay.

With Hischier’s status as the first #1 overall selection in franchise history, the “C” on his sweater, and the long-term contract, comes a litany of criticism. And most of the criticism is something along the lines of “fancy stats are nice and all, but if you’re the leader of the team and centering the top line you have to PRODUCE”.

If you browse Reddit and Twitter it’ll take you 10 seconds to find someone saying Nico is a 3C because he doesn’t produce. When hockey fans use the word “produce”, they typically mean “record goals and assists.” These metrics are used as a stand-in for “create chances for your teammates, and convert on the chances you get yourself”. And it’s a fair starting point because, after all, you need to score goals to win games and, if your top line isn’t going to score, who is?

Note: This was written before the Jets game, so current stats may differ slightly from what is quoted here. For instance, Nico now has 3 goals instead of 2 because he specifically wants to inconvenience me.

As of this writing, Hischier has played 21 games this season and has recorded 11 assists, which is the 2nd most on the team and just one behind the leader, Jesper Bratt. That is fine and not, in itself, a cause for concern. The issue for Nico is that he has scored just two goals in over 400 minutes of hockey, putting him on pace for about eight goals on the season. Even for a “playmaking” pivot – if that’s what we’re calling Nico – that is simply not going to cut it. 

Let’s clarify a few things at this point with regards to the definition of “production” on which you have to operate to arrive at the conclusion that Nico doesn’t produce. 

I totally get that when we want actual goals not “expected goals” or “Corsi” – we want the things that they count the score by to decide the winner. That’s totally reasonable. The Devils are a good team in terms of goals when Nico plays! The Devils are outscoring opponents by three goals when Nico is on the ice at 5-on-5 play – that equates to 0.83 goals per hour. The Oilers outscore opponents by 1.03 goals per hour with Connor McDavid on the ice. The Rangers are are at +0.94 with Artemi Panarin. The Bruins are at +0.75 with Brad Marchand. The Leafs are at +0.71 with Auston Matthews. These are in terms of goals – you know, the thing we’re supposed to care about instead of “analytics”. This is how you score a game. If the Devils are losing games, it is not because of what’s happening when Nico is on the ice. 

The goal results, contrary to popular belief, are there, for Nico. The issue is that “points” in the NHL are awarded through relatively arbitrary means. Obviously someone scored the goal, but how much work did they do on the play? For instance, Tomas Tatar’s first goal banked off his knee. We have a few empty-netters this year. And stuff like this happens occasionally. But even ignoring those situations, we then have the “assist” metric to pick apart.

Why do we award primary and secondary assists, but not tertiary ones? Why does the pass not need to directly lead to a shot like in basketball? This is a single statistic that awards credit for very specific, very arbitrary, contributions to a goal. It is not the only way to “produce”.

I assume that what would happen next in a conversation with a Nico-hater is that they’d refer to the fact that those “on-ice” goal results are just things that happened to occur during his shifts, but he is not doing anything himself. That is true if you ignore the fact that, among Devils forwards, he has the most takeaways, the most blocks, the most faceoff wins, the highest penalty differential, most shot and chance assists, most zone entries, the highest percent of zone entries with possession, and the most passes after zone entry (via Evolving-Hockey and Corey Sznajder). But that’s not “production”...

There also appears to be a weird double-standard for Nico in that people seem to want him to not only be very good, but they want him to be good in a specific way.

Last year, a former 1st round pick who was also the top 5v5 center for the Montreal Canadiens put up less than a half a point per game and followed it up with a measly 4 points in 22 playoff games. That player was Phillip Danault and he ended up widely regarded as one of the top free agent acquisitions, ultimately landing a 6-year, $33M contract as a 28-year-old. More than a few Devils fans wanted to acquire him. 

This year, there’s a former top-10 overall pick who is two years older than Nico, has just as many points as Nico in just as many games, has an even lower 5v5 shooting percentage, is getting outscored in his shifts, and had to be moved from center to wing because of how incomplete his 200-ft game is. That player is Pavel Zacha and he’s generally perceived as one of the few Devils who “produces” due to his timely goals.

These are arbitrary lines that seem to be strategically drawn in a way to depict Nico as an unproductive player.

So far this season, Nico Hischier has been aggressive off the puck, strong on the puck, an excellent facilitator, a dynamic puck-mover, and the Devils have seen the fruits of that labor by outsourcing their opponents when Nico is on the ice at the same rate as several other teams do during their stars’ shifts.

Perhaps, rather strictly adhering to a painfully stupid definition of the word production, we can simply acknowledge what is painfully obvious to who watches the games or analyzes the data – Nico has been given the hardest job on this team and his success in that role is one of the biggest reasons the Devils were even treading water during Hughes’s absence.

If Nico is this impactful right now, just wait until his shooting percentage isn’t half his career low. Maybe then we can finally admit just how essential he is to this team.