(Listen: The Athletic's Fluto Shinzawa discusses David Pastrnak's season on The Skate Podcast beginning at the 7:55 mark.)
That David Pastrnak’s offensive production has decreased not just this season, but for the last two years, is not debatable. What is debatable is whether it’s cause for real concern.
Pastrnak tied for the NHL lead in goals in 2019-20 with 48 in 70 games (0.69 per game). He dipped to 20 in 48 games (0.42 per game) last season, and now sits at eight through 26 games (0.31 per game) this season. His goals and points per game (0.81) this year are at their lowest marks since 2015-16, when he was 19 years old and playing his first full NHL season.
There is one obvious off-the-ice factor to take into account this year, and it's one that's much bigger than hockey. Pastrnak and his girlfriend, Rebecca Rohlsson, lost their newborn son, Viggo, in June. There is no way to quantify how much that has affected Pastrnak’s play this season, and it would be foolish to even try. It has obviously had some effect, as such a tragedy would on anyone.
Pastrnak acknowledged last week that the NHL’s holiday shutdown was a welcome break and an opportunity to reset for him. He was looking forward to spending time with his mother, brother and a friend from home, who were visiting him in Boston for the first time in two and a half years.
After a slow start that saw Pastrnak register two goals and three assists through the first eight games, Pastrnak seemed to turn a corner in November, putting up six goals and eight assists during an 11-game stretch. But then he went quiet again, recording zero goals and two assists in his last seven games before the pause.
Pastrnak has still been getting chances -- he hit several posts during that stretch and had seven shots on goal in the Bruins’ final game before the break -- but they’re not going in. That has been a theme this season. While his 4.42 shots on goal per game are actually a career high, his 7.0% shooting percentage is a career low, and nearly half his career average of 13.7%.
It’s the fact that he is at least getting chances that had his coach, Bruce Cassidy, striking an optimistic tone on Monday when asked about Pastrnak’s season.
“I think his game overall has been good,” Cassidy said of Pastrnak. “I think it was a bit of a slow start. We addressed that and maybe reasons why earlier. I think he’s certainly gotten over the hump in that area. His legs are under him. To me, he’s had some tough luck around the net. I think early on he wasn’t shooting, then he started shooting.
“I can’t remember him hitting so many posts in such a short stretch of games, to be honest with you. If a couple more of those go in, all of a sudden maybe you’re not talking about his numbers being down. For me, that’s the positive. I think he’d tell you the same thing. If he goes two or three games and he’s not getting any looks, that’s when as a coach I’d be worried, and as a player he’d be worried.
“…At the end of the day, like I said, he’s too good of a player to worry about him not scoring going forward. It’s too short a sample size and he’s had too many good looks for us to worry about it. We need it obviously, and we want that shooting percentage to go up. I think it’s only a matter of time.”
Pastrnak’s lack of finishing is particularly evident in his 5-on-5 numbers. According to Natural Stat Trick, his shots on goal per 60 minutes (11.9) and expected goals per 60 (0.89) are right in line with his numbers from the last two seasons. But his 5-on-5 shooting percentage (3.90%) and therefore actual goals (0.46 per 60) are way down. In his 2019-20 Rocket Richard season, those numbers were 13.81% and 1.52 goals per 60. Even last year, he was at 10.85% and 1.23.
Pastrnak is shooting from a little further away on average than he was in 2019-20 -- MoneyPuck.com has his average shot distance at 35.4 feet this year vs. 31.0 feet two years ago. As is the case with the rest of the Bruins, getting to “inside ice” more will be a point of emphasis coming out of this break. Still, that difference does not singlehandedly explain Pastrnak not scoring as much. His average 5-on-5 shot distance was the exact same last year as it is this year, yet he scored two and a half times more often in 2020-21.
On the power play, Pastrnak is having a different issue: He’s missing the net too much. He is taking more shots on the power play than last season and roughly the same amount as 2019-20. But his percentage of unblocked shot attempts that have missed the net has gone from 30.4% and 28.6% the last two years, respectively, to 45.9% this year.
Not finishing his 5-on-5 chances and missing the net on the power play are the kinds of things you might expect to see given that Pastrnak did not have anything close to a normal offseason. Those could be timing issues, or a matter of being just a little bit off.
To Cassidy’s point, though, it is encouraging that Pastrnak is still getting chances and taking shots. And if he keeps taking them, it may very well just be a matter of time before he finds that finishing touch and more of them start to go in, even if not quite at the same rate as two seasons ago.
“The puck is finding him. It’s just a matter of getting it to go in the net,” Cassidy said. “As a goal-scorer, I don’t think you can change a lot of what you do. You go through stretches like that, and you do need some volume shooting to get those goals to eventually go in. Then all of a sudden it goes the other way where it’s post and in instead of post and out.”
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