Part III in a Series
With all due respect to the NHL’s 1980s glory years and those gaudy numbers, we may be experiencing the golden era of passing and playmaking in hockey history right at this very moment.
Just watch Trevor Zegras flip the puck over the net. Or notice that Jonathan Huberdeau set the NHL record for most assists (85) in a single season by a left winger. Or consider that Johnny Gaudreau collected the most first (or primary) assists (37) in the salary cap era last season.
The creativity, the vision and the execution have probably never been better. And not every pass is equal. Analytics has shown that the key to scoring in today’s NHL is the completion of cross-ice passes to get goaltenders moving. Those assists are a big reason why, when it’s harder than ever to score on big and bulky goaltenders, goals were scored at a rate (6.28 goals per game) not seen since the 1995-96 season.
For the third part of our Daily Faceoff Archetypes Ranking project, where we’re sorting top players into nine different classification categories, we were challenged with projecting the 18 best Distributors for the 2022-23 NHL season. Since players can only be included in one classification bucket, in some ways, you could name some of the best passers in the game off the top of your head.
For these purposes, the definition of a Distributor is the player whose first instinct is to make a play, not shoot. They are an elite passer, creative with the puck, typically strong in tight areas, and someone who consistently and reliably connects with teammates in scoring areas to create scoring chances.
Naturally, you’d think of guys continuously near the top of the assist rankings, such as Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Artemi Panarin and Mitch Marner. They all made the cut, of course, since they were not classified among the 17 “Franchise” players.
The tougher part of the exercise was finding players who may not have originally stuck out as the elite of the elite distributors, or might be candidates to fit in other classification categories, such as shooter or power forward. With the help of five anonymous NHL front office executives, here are Daily Faceoff’s Top 18 projected Distributors for the 2022-23 season, with their league-wide rank from last season in those categories:
| Rank | Player | Pos | Age | Team | Assists | First Assists | First Assist % | Completed Pass/G | Score Chance Pass | Shot Prod Pass | Under Pressure |
| 1 | Artemi Panarin | LW | 30 | NYR | 74 | 23 | 31% | 5 | 7 | 4 | 21 |
| 2 | Jonathan Huberdeau | LW | 29 | CGY | 85 | 19 | 22% | 8 | 5 | 7 | 3 |
| 3 | Mitch Marner | RW | 25 | TOR | 62 | 22 | 35% | 11 | 3 | 11 | 35 |
| 4 | Johnny Gaudreau | LW | 29 | CBJ | 75 | 37 | 49% | 15 | 2 | 3 | 57 |
| 5 | Jack Hughes | C | 21 | NJD | 30 | 10 | 33% | 18 | 22 | 15 | 28 |
| 6 | Clayton Keller | C | 24 | ARI | 35 | 14 | 40% | 10 | 84 | 20 | 16 |
| 7 | Mathew Barzal | C | 25 | NYI | 44 | 13 | 30% | 21 | 18 | 5 | 40 |
| 8 | Mark Scheifele | C | 29 | WPG | 41 | 12 | 29% | 9 | 27 | 12 | 14 |
| 9 | Yevgeny Kuznetsov | C | 30 | WSH | 54 | 13 | 24% | 24 | 31 | 25 | 31 |
| 10 | Kevin Fiala | LW | 26 | LAK | 52 | 21 | 40% | 35 | 24 | 22 | 33 |
| 11 | Robert Thomas | C | 23 | STL | 57 | 24 | 42% | 43 | 9 | 36 | 67 |
| 12 | Mats Zuccarello | LW | 35 | MIN | 55 | 19 | 35% | 27 | 17 | 21 | 92 |
| 13 | Claude Giroux | LW | 34 | OTT | 44 | 9 | 20% | 28 | 64 | 31 | 42 |
| 14 | Taylor Hall | LW | 30 | BOS | 41 | 19 | 46% | 116 | 20 | 23 | 22 |
| 15 | Nick Suzuki | C | 23 | MTL | 40 | 12 | 30% | 42 | 46 | 34 | 17 |
| 16 | Jesper Bratt | LW | 24 | NJD | 47 | 15 | 32% | 47 | 21 | 19 | 160 |
| 17 | Nicklas Backstrom | C | 34 | WSH | 25 | 7 | 28% | 22 | 52 | 64 | 75 |
| 18 | Jakub Voracek | RW | 33 | CBJ | 56 | 24 | 43% | 39 | 28 | 15 | 145 |
LEGEND:
First Assist %: Percentage of assists that were the first assist on a goal.
Number for categories indicated below is league-wide rank in 2021-22 season
Comp Pass/GP: Completed passes per game
Score Chance Pass: Completed passes where the receiver produces a scoring chance.
Shot Prod Pass: Completed passes where the receiver shoots prior to losing possession.
Under Pressure: Completed passes in which the passer is within a stick length of the opposition.
There was no shortage of players under consideration, including Pavel Buchnevich, William Nylander, Teuvo Teravainen and Trevor Zegras. Nylander is perhaps better classified in another category. And Zegras was knocking on the door from his rookie season in Anaheim but didn’t quite have the numbers to make the cut.
Indeed, Panarin, Huberdeau, Marner and Gaudreau are all such elite Distributors that they warrant significant consideration for the Franchise category. They fell just short.
Another question considered was whether a defenseman should be worthy of the Distributor category. For instance, research with the help of Statthletes found that Vancouver Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes completed a staggering 300 more passes over the course of last season than any other player in the league. He completed 3,465 passes, according to Statthleteswhen the league average was just 776. In the end, we felt that while Hughes is an unquestioned elite distributor, he falls into a different classification bucket.
In addition, there was less of an emphasis placed on accuracy, and more on the ability to consistently get the puck to a place where the receiver turns it into a scoring chance. Part of that includes a reliance on teammates. Clayton Keller’s numbers (and ranking) suffered because his teammates couldn’t turn his passes into shots or scoring chances as often. One executive wondered aloud whether Keller and Marner’s point production would be all that different if they switched teams, a major vote for Keller’s ability. Veteran Capitals center Nicklas Backstrom is the NHL’s most accurate passer, completing 80 percent of his dishes, but he was less successful on a per-game basis in helping produce scoring chances – and he is expected to miss a significant chunk of this upcoming season. injury.
Kevin Fiala, Nick Suzuki and Jesper Bratt all earned significant praise coming off their breakout seasons – and all have been paid accordingly as among the elite Distributors in the NHL.
Up Next: Shooter
Part I: Franchise Players
Part II: Clutch Players
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