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A short while back I had a discussion on twitter with a few people regarding the way Chris Kreider played this past season. Following a decent bit of conversation regarding perceptions of Kreider I was linked to a chart by Ian Fleming that showed Kreider’s meaningful production and decided to do more of a deep dive into how number 20 played this past season, and how that does or does not fit with perceptions of how he played last season.

Below you can find the aforementioned chart, where although his name is not visible, Fleming reports that Kreider is the only Ranger in the top right quadrant also in the top 100 primary points/60 in the league (I’m taking him at his word). What this indicates is that not only does Kreider at or above the league median in terms of individual shot attempts per 60 minutes, he’s also at or above the league median in terms of high danger scoring chances per 60 minutes.

Additionally, the fact that he’s in the top 100 primary points/60 in the league indicates that not only is he getting to high danger areas and producing with volume, but that he’s also converting on a lot of those chances.  What this basically means is that while other players on the Rangers might potentially match Kreider in terms of production, it takes Kreider less time to do so, making him a very offensively efficient player to have on ice.

Next we have a chart that represents individual percentage of all on-ice shot attempts on the x-axis and shot attempts against per 60 minutes on the y-axis, with coloration describing each player’s primary points per 60 minutes. Here we have Kreider just about even with Derek Stepan, who is usually regarded as one of the more defensively responsible players the Rangers have, in addition to the noteworthy fact that Kreider has a higher primary points per 60 minutes than both Rick Nash and Derick Brassard, both regarded as keys to the Rangers offense. Basically, Kreider is one of the Rangers’ better all around players by comparison, and yet he doesn’t always get that rap.

2015-2016 NYR Forwards iCF(CF+CA) and CA60

While it is true that he wasn’t scoring as much early in the season, a look at his PDO is warranted in that case. Kreider had a PDO of 48.8 between the start of the season and January 1st, posting a much higher PDO of 102.6 from the New Year on. In other words he wasn’t putting in less effort or playing any worse than normal, he was just getting incredibly unlucky with his shots.

All of this is to say that while Kreider gets a lot of heat in some circles for his inconsistency or perceived lack of effort, he’s actually one of the Rangers most dangerous forwards, and hopefully remains a core member of this team for years to come. Early in the season he was snakebitten, but he was consistently producing shots and high quality scoring chances throughout the season, with the numbers to match. I know some fans may not be huge fans of the numbers, but sometimes it is worth it to check yourself and your perceptions.

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