Over the past eight games, Toronto Maple Leafs’ franchise center Auston Matthews has struggled a bit, at least relative to the blistering goal pace he’s put up this season. In that span, he’s tallied just two goals and four total points, bringing him to 54 and 80 respectively through 63 games. Averaging two goals every eight games would put Matthews at a respectable enough 20 goals in an 82-game span, but considering the incredible 77-goal pace he was repping before the slump, it’s somewhat alarming. His underlying statistics have taken a bit of a dip as well, indicating that it might not necessarily be just a streak of unluckiness.
Underlying Statistics Show Retrogression
I’m not going to project that Matthews’ underlying statistics during this stretch have been bad — realistically, they’re quite the opposite — but he has seen a bit of a downtick in success in this regard as well. Take his expected goals share (xGF%) as an example: on the season, his xGF% is 54.44%, second best among Maple Leafs’ forwards with at least 30 games played this year. In his last eight games, it’s dropped down to 53.94%, which is just 0.5% worse than his season average, but places seventh among forwards. This shows me that he’s playing worse despite the team as a whole performing better. One would expect and hope a team’s best player to be rampaging through the league when the entire team is playing well, and while Matthews isn’t playing poorly, he is being overshadowed by the likes of Calle Jarnkrok and Bobby McMann.
One reason for his down-trending metrics could be that he’s getting the puck on the net much less recently than he’s grown accustomed to. In the 55 games prior to this rut, Matthews was averaging 11.23 shots per 60 minutes. Since then, he’s averaged 9.81. The shot attempts are there, having actually increased from 20.76 to 21.49; they’re just not hitting the net as frequently. He’s also attempting less off the rush, only posting 0.47 rush attempts per 60 in his last eight as opposed to 0.64 over the previous 55. As a result of him hitting the net less and attempting fewer rush shots, his individual expected goals (ixG) per 60 minutes has dropped from 1.24 pre-slump to 0.99, and his individual high-danger attempts (iHDCF) per 60 has dropped from 6.47 to 5.14.
Related: Maple Leafs Sign Bobby McMann to 2-Year Extension
One interesting thing of note is that his hits per 60 minutes have more than doubled during this stretch. In his first 55 games, he averaged 3.34 hits/60 and has upped it to 7.47 since. He’s also increased his giveaways/60 from 2.06 to 2.80. Speculatorily, it might be his frustration of not scoring getting the best of him and it’s translated to physicality and sloppiness with the puck.
Is Positive Puck Luck Regression Incoming?
Of course, there’s the luck factor — it’s both true that his underlying statistics have taken a nosedive and that he’s been unlucky with his shooting. In order to statistically define “puck luck,” one should look at a player’s PDO — a combination of shooting percentage (S%) and save percentage (SV%). On a league-wide scale, PDO will always equal exactly 1.00 — a shot either gets saved or ends up in a goal against. If a team or player has a PDO above 1.00, they should be considered “lucky,” and vice versa. A very low PDO is considered at or below 0.98, and, by that same standard, a very high PDO is considered at or above 1.02. Extremely skilled shooters, like Matthews, will consistently have a higher-than-average PDO by proxy of them simply being better at shooting the puck than the average NHLer.
Matthews’ PDO for this entire season is 1.019, which normally would be considered to be “very lucky,” but I would consider fair just because of the sheer amount of shooting talent he has. Over the last eight games, where he has only put two pucks past the goaltender, his PDO is .949, well below average, and well above the threshold where he should expect positive regression to the mean. Considering that his underlying statistics are still superb, even if they have gotten a little worse recently, and that his PDO is extremely low over the last stretch, I would anticipate a quick return to form for the future 70-goal scorer.
