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Charlie McAvoy steering Bruins towards historic NHL regular season
McAvoy is developing into the blueprint for the NHL's elite defenseman. That and more in this week's 10 Insights and Observations.
Welcome to 10 Insights and Observations. Every week, I’ll use this space to highlight teams, players, storylines and general musings around the NHL.
This week we look at an impressive Devils rookie, Charlie McAvoy taking the final step, goalie assists, bank passes, Showtime and much more.
McAvoy evolving into the ultimate dual-threat defenseman
Charlie McAvoy has always been a reasonably productive defenseman, but this season he's taken it to a whole new level.
Last year, he put up a career high 0.72 points per game and he’s followed that up with another leap this season at 0.91 points per game. Along the way he has become a human highlight reel. This fake slap shot and dance around Alex DeBrincat before sending a cross-ice pass to set the table for David Pastrnak to score his 40th was beautiful and ridiculously creative. Can’t recall ever seeing a fake quite like this in an NHL game before:
A month ago he scored this beautiful goal during some 4-on-4 action against the San Jose Sharks.
McAvoy has always been viewed as a strong defenseman who can match up against top players. He even has some physicality and jam to his game. He’s 6-foot-1 and listed at 209 pounds (which truthfully sounds light), and he’s physically strong. Playing with Matt Grzelcyk, they have controlled play and matched up well against top players. They have outscored opponents 24-9 at 5-on-5. The last step for McAvoy was blossoming into an offensive force, and he’s doing that this season.
Fabian Zetterlund playing unsung hero role for Devils
The New Jersey Devils have so many good players that it’s hard to keep track of them. One of those players falling under the radar is Fabian Zetterlund.
Last season, he had a cup of coffee in the league, including three games in November — he went pointless — before playing all of April and putting up eight points in 11 games. He hasn’t carried that exact production over in his first full season in the league but he’s up to 20 points in 44 games and looks like a player.
To level-set a bit here, Zetterlund is turning 24 this year and he’s played primarily with Tomas Tatar and Nico Hischier. If you don’t show anything at this point, you risk the league forgetting you. At the same time, those are not easy minutes. Hischier is used as a matchup center because he’s such a strong two-way player. To slot beside him in, effectively, your rookie season, means you have to have a high level of detail in your game. He’s only 5-foot-11, but he’s feisty.
This is just a great shift, pursuing the puck, muscling a defender off the puck and getting body positioning, then feeding a beautiful pass for a goal.
He’s shooting only 7.5 percent which does not match up with how he can shoot (he ripped a one-timer by Connor Hellebuyck last week — he can definitely hum it). He’s a smart, tenacious player with only six penalty minutes so far this season. The Devils suddenly have a number of stars, but you need the support players to round out your team and Zetterlund is showing really well so far.
Return of the bank pass
When the Detroit Red Wings were a dynasty, one thing they were able to weaponize is using the boards to create offense. The famed bouncy boards of Joe Louis Arena created all sorts of chaos with the way the puck would hop off of them. This was pretty well a set play for the Red Wings:
It’s a smart idea and something we should see teams do more while on offense. Defenses pack the house now, making it difficult to simply get shots through traffic. One counter to that is simply not trying to get the puck through by expanding your shooting zone. The Anaheim Ducks recently scored a goal like this:
🚨 Vatrano off the end boards!
We lead 2-0! pic.twitter.com/BQWF0fXweA— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) February 20, 2023
Florida actively lets Derek Grant stand in front all alone. They are focused on challenging the shooter (in this case Kevin Shattenkirk) and preventing the puck from getting to the net altogether. Whether Shattenkirk meant to do that is a different story altogether but there’s a play to be had here. We should see it more often.
Long live goalie offence!
When the NHL introduced the trapezoid coming out of the 2004-05 lockout, many wondered if it was the beginning of the end of puck-handling goalies. There’s just something fans enjoy about it. A good goalie fake is magical. A goalie outlet pass is awesome. They can single-handedly break a forecheck at times… or give away an empty net goal.
Well, it looks like goalies passes are very much alive and well. There are 32 goalies with at least a point so far this season (last season there were 28). Andrei Vasilevskiy and Tristan Jarry are tied for the lead in goalie points with four assists each. Frederik Andersen has already hit that mark with months to go, including this gorgeous pass in the outdoor game:
Are you kidding me? That is over the defense and on the tape. There are defensemen who can’t make that pass. A good pass up the ice can burn teams in so many ways, including catching bad changes, like Ilya Samsonov did here against the Boston Bruins.
