Graph: Matthews PPG as the season goes on & he plays consecutive games

[Martin Skoula]

How long does the rest have to be before the benefits kick in? Did he come out hot after the bye week/all star weekend? How about those weird games with 4-5 days of rest in between?

I don't think this is enough data to draw a meaningful conclusion yet to be honest, at least not any more than Laine only scoring when Matthews is out.

 

[drewjenks]

Even the media has noticed, that Auston Matthews is always HOT when he comes back from an injury - his PPG in games after returning from injuries is way higher than his averages. (2,00 ppg vs 0,97 ppg)

What hasn't been discussed enough is the fact that Matthews is always hot after resting, and his PPG levels after approximately 10 games.

The shorter his game streaks are, the higher his PPG is. If he plays the whole season, the PPG levels down.

Here is a PPG graph for Matthews, showing the PPG level of his game streaks. Not the season PPG, but the PPG of every streak of consecutive games without missing games in betweeen due to injury.

View attachment 197025

As you can see, he is pretty much always in god-mode when he has had some solid rest.

If he would play full seasons, his PPG would have been approximately 0,87 in his 2nd season, and about 1,05 this season.

His PPG in his current game streak is 1,0227 ppg

Points per game in the league:
Kucherov : 1,59
McDavid : 1,49

Top 10 in scoring: 1,23
Top 20 : 1,13
Top 30 : 1,04

There's no logic behind why this happens to Matthews ... it's not a trend among players.

Does this dude just get bored if he plays too much hockey?
Does he have a chronic injury that needs rest?
Is he the Mexican Larry Byrd?

 

[King Mapes]

What do you mean by "elite"?

Top 10 scorers in the league? Top 30?

This season Matthews would have been quite exactly around 30th in the league in scoring, if he would have been able to play the entire season. (He is currently 48th)

Around 30? He's 18 in PPG and right around Ovechkin. Is he not elite?

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Around 30? He's 18 in PPG and right around Ovechkin. Is he not elite?

But as you can clearly see from the graph, his PPG would NOT be 1.13 for the season (like it is now) IF he would have played the whole season. He clearly cools down significantly if he plays a bunch of consecutive games, and in the beginning of the season he only played 11 games before his 1st injury break, thus having a higher PPG for his 1st game streak than he would have had if he played the whole season. (His ppg for those first 11 games was 1.4545)

His PPG in his current, longer game streak is 1.0227. With that PPG he would be 32th in the league this season (among players with at least 60 points)

Thus I predict that he would be around 30th in the league in scoring, if he would have played the entire season.

 

[Nithoniniel]

This is interesting, but in no way enough to draw conclusions from. Numbers always normalize with a growing sample size. No statistician would treat data like you do here.

If we want Matthews to produce like one of the best players in the league, we need to give him the PP time to match them. So far this season, most of the top players have played 250+ PP minutes. Matthews has 130. It's over a full minute more on the PP per game, which in Matthews' case would be about 7-8 points more, for a 1.28 ppg and a 105 point pace. Which would be top 10, even when not taking anything else into account. And that's while looking at the stats in the middle of his slump.

Matthews is good. Don't let contracts and bad, opportunistic narratives distract you from the big picture here. We have two franchise players, and signed a third this offseason.

 

[Jackson14]

Eye test agrees with what this graph is showing. He always come back from time off flying, and frankly looks unstoppable, and then after a couple games that dwindles away and you don't really notice him much, odd snipe here and there but not much else.

Maybe he just gets fatigued more easily than your average player? Who knows. Maybe this is why he failed to raise his game in the post season last year. Just physically didn't have the energy to do it. That might be taking it a little far but if the same thing happens this year we might have an ongoing problem here.

I don't watch the Raptors that much but I know that they've been giving Kawhi Leonard a lot of rest to keep him healthy and fresh for when it matters.

 

[Dayjobdave]

You’ve managed to create a graph to show Matthews’ declining performance based upon the fact he scored 4 goals in his first NHL game, and he has happened to have multi point games when returning from injury.

These are not trends. Every player in the league will gravitate to the mean across games played.

For example, Matthews has had 7 games this year with three or more points, but that is not apparent from this representation as the games-played denominator reduces the apparent impact by disbursing across all games in the streak. The longer the streak, the lower the impact of a multi point game.

This is a beautiful example of how a stat can be used to say something other than what the information evidences

 

[Nineteen67]

Oh gawd! Does Pastrnak have a similar graph? If so, I’m buying stock in scoreboard lights.

 

[King Mapes]

But as you can clearly see from the graph, his PPG would NOT be 1.13 for the season (like it is now) IF he would have played the whole season. He clearly cools down significantly if he plays a bunch of consecutive games, and in the beginning of the season he only played 11 games before his 1st injury break, thus having a higher PPG for his 1st game streak than he would have had if he played the whole season. (His ppg for those first 11 games was 1.4545)

His PPG in his current, longer game streak is 1.0227. With that PPG he would be 32th in the league this season (among players with at least 60 points)

Thus I predict that he would be around 30th in the league in scoring, if he would have played the entire season.

Lol okay but that's not how this works. You literally just made numbers up. His PPG for the whole season would sit him 18 so that's around where he'd be not the made up number. How do you know he hasn't been playing through shoulder pain? If he played every game, it would mean he's less likely playing hurt therefor I predict he would be right around exactly 10th in league scoring if he was healthy.

 

[Buds17]

At least he's pacing to play a handful or so more games than last season. Would be great to see him play the full 82 again though considering his game has naturally improved since his rookie season. PPG obviously means that much more the closer GP gets to 82.

 

[Buds17]

delete

 

[thewave]

ITT I learned that we certainly overpaid for this player. 2m overpay per year.

 

[Sperss1997]

Even the media has noticed, that Auston Matthews is always HOT when he comes back from an injury - his PPG in games after returning from injuries is way higher than his averages. (2,00 ppg vs 0,97 ppg)

What hasn't been discussed enough is the fact that Matthews is always hot after resting, and his PPG levels after approximately 10 games.

The shorter his game streaks are, the higher his PPG is. If he plays the whole season, the PPG levels down.

Here is a PPG graph for Matthews, showing the PPG level of his game streaks. Not the season PPG, but the PPG of every streak of consecutive games without missing games in betweeen due to injury.

View attachment 197025

As you can see, he is pretty much always in god-mode when he has had some solid rest.

If he would play full seasons, his PPG would have been approximately 0,87 in his 2nd season, and about 1,05 this season.

His PPG in his current game streak is 1,0227 ppg

Points per game in the league:
Kucherov : 1,59
McDavid : 1,49

Top 10 in scoring: 1,23
Top 20 : 1,13
Top 30 : 1,04

Maybe I read this graph in a wrong way, but it seem like a bad way of using data.
Take Matthews debut game with 4 goals. On the 2016-graph that game counts 100%, while the rest of games is weighted with some kind of average. That means that the only thing that this graph really shows is that Matthews has made a lot of points in his very FIRST game after a break. Seem like a manipulated conclusion

 

[WTFMAN99]

This is interesting, but in no way enough to draw conclusions from. Numbers always normalize with a growing sample size. No statistician would treat data like you do here.

If we want Matthews to produce like one of the best players in the league, we need to give him the PP time to match them. So far this season, most of the top players have played 250+ PP minutes. Matthews has 130. It's over a full minute more on the PP per game, which in Matthews' case would be about 7-8 points more, for a 1.28 ppg and a 105 point pace. Which would be top 10, even when not taking anything else into account. And that's while looking at the stats in the middle of his slump.

Matthews is good. Don't let contracts and bad, opportunistic narratives distract you from the big picture here. We have two franchise players, and signed a third this offseason.

Problem is we don't seem to get the PP opportunities that other teams get. The other issue I have is, Matthews is supposed to be an elite player, he should be able to make other players around him better.

Crosby won an Art Ross with Kunitz and Dupuis as his wingers. He's the 2nd highest aav in the league while getting a very favorable term.

Needs to get his ass in gear.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Maybe I read this graph in a wrong way, but it seem like a bad way of using data.
Take Matthews debut game with 4 goals. On the 2016-graph that game counts 100%, while the rest of games is weighted with some kind of average. That means that the only thing that this graph really shows is that Matthews has made a lot of points in his very FIRST game after a break. Seem like a manipulated conclusion

The games are not "weighted" with any kind of values.

The graph only shows the average PPG of his game streak on that specific game number.

His average PPG for his 1st game of every streak is obviously the points he had in the 1st game.

The number on the 5th game is the PPG for the 1st 5 games, the number on the 10th game is the average PPG in the 1st 10 games of the streak, etc.

If he would come out of injury / other break cold, and would have zero points in the 1st game, his PPG would start from 0.00 and start to climb up when he would "warm up". Well, that is not the case: he comes in super-hot every single time when rested, and cools down after that, without exception.

 

[Nithoniniel]

Problem is we don't seem to get the PP opportunities that other teams get. The other issue I have is, Matthews is supposed to be an elite player, he should be able to make other players around him better.

Crosby won an Art Ross with Kunitz and Dupuis as his wingers. He's the 2nd highest aav in the league while getting a very favorable term.

Needs to get his ass in gear.

Crosby is probably a top 10 player in history too. Matthews lines up better with someone like Malkin. Besides, a lot of players are producing very well around Matthews.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

You’ve managed to create a graph to show Matthews’ declining performance based upon the fact he scored 4 goals in his first NHL game, and he has happened to have multi point games when returning from injury.

These are not trends. Every player in the league will gravitate to the mean across games played.

For example, Matthews has had 7 games this year with three or more points, but that is not apparent from this representation as the games-played denominator reduces the apparent impact by disbursing across all games in the streak. The longer the streak, the lower the impact of a multi point game.

This is a beautiful example of how a stat can be used to say something other than what the information evidences

It is not about being hot just in the 1st games after rest. You should be able to tell that from the graph quite easily.

If it is not clearly evident to you, I made you another graph:

Matthews has had 5 game streaks of at least 16 games, that's why I cut it at 16 games. (He has had only 3 streaks of 17 games or more)

As you can see, Matthews' PPG game by game is very high in games 2-7 too, independent of the hot 1st games - and his production dips off in games 8-16 of each streak after rest.

The PPG averages in each streak in another way:

1st game of each streak	2,43 PPG
Games #2-5	1,286 PPG
Games #6-10	0,886 PPG
Games #11-15	0,577 PPG

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

As you can see, even the 4-5 game rolling averages go down as he gets tired, even if we don't count the 1st games at all

If this would be just a case of random PPG:s regressing to the mean, he would randomly start cold with zero points (or 4 points in his 1st 10games), but he does not. He is always better than his career average in his first few games after rest, and levels off after that.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Matthews' PPG averages in his 1st 5 games of his every game streak after rest (7 streaks, 5*7=35 games) vs the rest of his career (games #6 - #88 of every streak, including playoffs)

	PPG
1st 5 games of each game streak (35games)	1,514
Games #6 - #88 of each streak (175 games)	0,834

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

What is quite evident is that Matthews got a boat load of media attention in his 2nd season due to having very high PPG:s - because he had so much rest

If he would have played at least 76 games every season, his averages would have been much lower

As you can see, even the MSM is cathing up to this:

https://www.tsn.ca/video/did-matthews-hot-start-to-the-season-change-our-expectations-for-him~1631194

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Lol okay but that's not how this works. You literally just made numbers up. His PPG for the whole season would sit him 18 so that's around where he'd be not the made up number. How do you know he hasn't been playing through shoulder pain? If he played every game, it would mean he's less likely playing hurt therefor I predict he would be right around exactly 10th in league scoring if he was healthy.

I'm not making any numbers up, I just took his average for his longer streak, and added a little to it.

As you can see from the graph (+ the other average stats I have posted in this thread), Matthews significantly cools down when he plays consecutive games without long rests.

That is why his PPG this season would NOT be his current PPG average for the season, if he would've played the entire season. He has a higher PPG average due to having extra rest in the middle of the season, and thus having 2 hot, rested game streak starts instead of just 1.

In approximating his "whole season points" there is absolutely zero reason to assume that he would have deviated from his usual pattern of having much lower PPG averages after the 1st 5-10 games.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Eye test agrees with what this graph is showing. He always come back from time off flying, and frankly looks unstoppable, and then after a couple games that dwindles away and you don't really notice him much, odd snipe here and there but not much else.

Maybe he just gets fatigued more easily than your average player? Who knows. Maybe this is why he failed to raise his game in the post season last year. Just physically didn't have the energy to do it. That might be taking it a little far but if the same thing happens this year we might have an ongoing problem here.

I'd say it is because his playing style relies so much on him being just flat out faster than most of the league

When he is fresh, he outskates about 90% of the league with ease, putting up higher numbers.

When some fatigue sets in, his production dips off faster than with other guys (who rely on their shot, hockey IQ, huge body or something like that)

It would also indicate that he is a more of sprinter compared to the rest of the league, more than for example Connor McDavid, who seems to slow down less than the average NHL player with fatigue, thus being even better in the 2nd half of the season.

Here's the league points leaders since Jan 1 this year.

They all seem to be guys who rely heavily on things that don't slow down much with fatigue: puck skills, hockey IQ, 'awareness', shot....

McDavid has been 1,44 PPG after Jan 1, and 1,52 before that. He has again been able to pretty much keep his level. He's also 1,714 PPG in his last 7 games, let's see if he again has a better 2nd half than his 1st.

 

[WTFMAN99]

Crosby is probably a top 10 player in history too. Matthews lines up better with someone like Malkin. Besides, a lot of players are producing very well around Matthews.

Marleau was a handicap. Just a lot more productive with Johnsson on his LW.

Crosby is definitely top 10 all time but even Malkin is far more dominant then Matthews more often then not.

 

[Menzinger]

Problem is we don't seem to get the PP opportunities that other teams get. The other issue I have is, Matthews is supposed to be an elite player, he should be able to make other players around him better.

Crosby won an Art Ross with Kunitz and Dupuis as his wingers. He's the 2nd highest aav in the league while getting a very favorable term.

Needs to get his ass in gear.

Well, Kapanen did go from a 10 point NHLer to a 50ish point guy by getting icetime alongside Matthews...

 

[socko]

There's no logic behind why this happens to Matthews ... it's not a trend among players.

Does this dude just get bored if he plays too much hockey?
Does he have a chronic injury that needs rest?
Is he the Mexican Larry Byrd?

Yes, I think he gets bored and lazy. He's a fantastic hockey player, but he's not a professional. Total amateur at this point. McDavid is a professional.

 

[Throw More Waffles]

Well, Kapanen did go from a 10 point NHLer to a 50ish point guy by getting icetime alongside Matthews...

Ah... but let's stay consistent with that.

How many points did Nylander get when it was his birthright to be beside Matthews?
And what has Nylanders production been seen moved away from Matthews?

Jeez... it's almost as though (as even supported by your logic surrounding Kapanen), that Nylanders numbers were massively inflated due to his birthright to Matthews wing.

 

[Menzinger]

Ah... but let's stay consistent with that.

How many points did Nylander get when it was his birthright to be beside Matthews?
And what has Nylanders production been seen moved away from Matthews?

Jeez... it's almost as though (as even supported by your logic surrounding Kapanen), that Nylanders numbers were massively inflated due to his birthright to Matthews wing.

Nobody has ever stated that Nylander didn’t get a boost by playing alongside Matthews: skilled players improve each other’s game.

In other news: water is wet and grass is green.

 

[Throw More Waffles]

Nobody has ever stated that Nylander didn’t get a boost by playing alongside Matthews: skilled players improve each other’s game.

In other news: water is wet and grass is green.

So Kapanen went from 9 points to 50 points playing (sometimes) with Matthews, which shows just how dramatic the "Matthews effect" is.
Nylander has gone from 60 points to 35 point pace after being taken away from Matthews.

Man... I sure hope Nylander is giving Matthews half of his contract. Because he's looking like a fringe nhl'er when Matthews isn't beside him.