Opinion

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This article was published 11/10/2019 (1327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Even before his tour de force performance Thursday night in a 5-2 victory over the Minnesota Wild, there had been a lot of talk about the “new” Patrik Laine.

Even before we look at the production Laine has put up in this young season, the commitment to playing the right way appears to be stronger than ever for him.

The contrast in effectiveness for Laine to this time last season is striking — three goals and seven assists in five games, compared to two goals and just one assist after five games in 2018-19.

Laine’s production, or lack thereof, at five-on-five was a major problem last season. While the goals eventually came, he registered only 12 assists that weren’t on the power play in 82 games last year. He already has six after five games.

In fact, nine of his 10 points through the first five games weren’t earned on the power play, compared to just one even-strength point in his first five last year. It took Laine until Nov. 24 — 22 games — to register nine points that weren’t generated with the man advantage.

So clearly something has changed, but what? A better commitment to backchecking and doing the little things might be part of it, but has anything changed in his approach to offence?

Laine is not a high-volume shooter at even-strength overall, his 4.59 shot attempts per 20 minutes last season made him just the 97th-most common shooter among forwards with 750 or more minutes played. Laine has, historically, not needed a ton of shots to extract lots of value, and this season he seems to be getting more of his shot attempts on net — more from the perimeter and more from the inner-slot.

Meanwhile, he’s also increased his completed passes to the slot which, along with his perimeter shots creating rebounds, adds a lot more playmaking to his game than usual.

While Laine is getting more shots on net this season, his attempts have actually dropped slightly. Looking at the assist numbers, my first thought was maybe he is taking advantage of teams assuming he’s going to take the shot and changed up his tendencies.

When you’re the puck carrier in the offensive zone, you only really have a couple of active options, especially when under pressure. You can shoot the puck at the net, you can attempt to make a pass or you can attempt to deke. So how often is Laine doing each?

Laine’s deking has stayed almost exactly where it was last year, while he’s shooting less and passing much more. Overall, he’s making more offensive-zone plays than last season by a little bit, 22.5 attempts to make plays every 20 minutes of ice time at even-strength compared to 21 last year. All of that is from attempting to make passes.

In fact, only Adam Lowry has attempted more passes than Laine this year among Jets forwards, a big change from last season when Laine ranked eighth.

Whether a heavier focus on passing is the best way to maximize the talents of a shooter as dangerous as Laine is can be a subject for debate, but when a player spends most of his offensive-zone time on the perimeter, being capable of moving the puck to and through the slot for teammates is a must.

So in that regard, if Laine wants to continue to be a perimeter shooter, something he’s had tons of success with so far in his career, adding that extra playmaking ability and waiting for clearer lanes to shoot through probably isn’t a bad idea.

The other area you want to see from a perimeter player is a willingness to forecheck and dig up loose pucks to keep plays going. Last season this wasn’t an area Laine was great at; he was only 10th among the team’s forwards in offensive-zone loose-puck recoveries.

With all the talk of Laine working harder and doing the little things to create more success for his team, is he winning those loose pucks?

Well he’s no Andrew Copp, who leads the Jets in that area year after year, but only Copp and Mark Letestu are recovering more rubber in the offensive zone than Laine thus far on a per-minute basis. That’s a huge improvement for a player of Laine’s playing style, and we haven’t even left the offensive zone in our analysis of where the changes have come.

Laine is already one of the better goal-scorers in the league, but many think he has what it takes to be one of the best players, period. It will be a long process that needs a lot of commitment to go from being a defensive liability to a great all-around player, but the effort is clearly there and so far this year he’s being rewarded for it.

Andrew Berkshire is a hockey writer specializing in data-driven analysis of the game.