What We Learned: Who is the NHL’s king of 3-on-3 OT?

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

The Calgary Flames have only been to overtime once since Dec. 17, and they ended up losing that game in a shootout.

Prior to that, though, there was no team in the NHL that should have been more feared in the extra period of 3-on-3, because their success rate was mind-boggling. They’ve won eight of their 12 overtimes, lost once, and gone 1-2 in the three that lasted into the shootout. Any time you outscore your opponents 8-1 in any situation, even if it’s only in a combined total of 32:48, you’re in a good place.

And moreover, when that scoring differential wins you eight more points in the standings, it’s a major advantage.

Now, you can obviously say that this is little more than a confluence of good circumstances. The Flames lead the league in overtime shooting percentage at 32 percent, and also have the fourth-highest save percentage at .952. That’s PDO to the max, and especially where it concerns goaltending; Kari Ramo and Jonas Hiller just aren’t that good.

But as to the shooting percentage, well, there’s plenty of reason to believe that can be kept up for quite a while to come, and it’s all thanks to one man: Johnny Gaudreau.

Again, Calgary has eight overtime wins, and he has a point on seven of them, with three goals and four assists. That’s the largest OT point total for any single player in the league, ahead of Brent Seabrook (0-5-5), and five guys who have four points: Patrick Kane, Anze Kopitar, Andrej Sekera, Jordan Staal and Jake Voracek. Of that group, only he and Kopitar have yet to be on the ice for an OT goal against.

That alone is a major difference-maker, but what really separates Gaudreau from literally every other player in the NHL is that this is a game state which seems to be designed to specifically benefit him.

In all, 233 skaters have played more than five minutes of 3-on-3 time this season, and this is where Gaudreau ranks among all of them in terms of individual events — i.e. all shots taken by that player, rather than while that player is on the ice — per 20 minutes (instead of the normal 60, because the current league leader in 3-on-3 ice time only has 31:14, so most guys probably won’t sniff 60):

This is clearly a guy who is considerably better than everyone at just about everything to do with 3-on-3 play. The three guys in front of him in goals, by the way, are shooting 100 percent (Vlad Namestnikov), 75 percent (Jordan Staal), and 43 percent (Jonathan Toews), and you probably make the argument that only Toews — with a similar number of minutes played and only two fewer shots — has a relatively sustainable number in that regard. Namestnikov is 2 for 2 in OT, and Staal is 3 for 4. They’ve also played far fewer actual minutes than Toews or Gaudreau.

But we also have to keep in mind that Calgary as a whole is a goal factory in overtime, so perhaps Gaudreau is benefiting from a great system and some very skilled teammates, particularly on the back end. It’s unlikely that any team has a group of three defenders as well-suited to 3-on-3 as Calgary’s Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, and Dougie Hamilton. Moreover, Sam Bennett, Sean Monahan, Jiri Hudler, Mikael Backlund (and so on) are pretty good guys to rely upon in OT as well.

To that end, it’s important to note that in terms of per-60 quality, the Flames are third in high-danger chances for, and fourth in high-danger chances against. They’re also eighth in shots for, and 15th in shots against. And of course, second in goals scored, and fourth in goals conceded. Pretty impressive numbers across the board, so it’s arguable that a good, top-heavy team such as the Flames are going to create an environment conducive to Gaudreau’s absurd levels of individual success.

Except: It’s the other way around.

Gaudreau basically drags the Flames kicking ands screaming to some of the best differentials in the league, with the only difference really being that when he’s on the ice, other teams get more going offensively as well, except where goals are concerned. He creates an absurd amount of offense that the Flames, without him, cannot really hope to replicate, and that’s reflected in the fact that he has scored 3-4-7 on his team’s eight OT goals this season. He even picked up an assist on one of the two for which he was off the ice.

Let’s put it as simply as possible. Gaudreau has personally taken eight of the Flames’ 30 high-quality chances (40 percent), 11 of their 31 scoring chances overall (35 percent), and 14 of their 36 shots attempts (40 percent). By himself. Which, I think, goes a long way toward explaining why he’s gotten in on seven of their eight goals (87.5 percent).

There is, of course, the chance that these numbers change substantially in the final third of the season, but based on everything we’ve seen in the data and in terms of actual on-ice play, I wouldn’t bet any amount of money on Gaudreau’s level of dominance taking any sort of major step back. His skillset has always seemed perfectly suited to even-strength situations that are less than 5-on-5, and that’s with the acknowledgement that he’s also really damn good at 5-on-5.

The quality of his first two steps, his speed, his skill in tight spaces, his ability to get around just about anyone, and vision all combine to give him a unique quality that no one in the league can really replicate. He was made for 3-on-3, and 3-on-3 was made for him.

But really, there’s one chart that illustrates the huge gap between Gaudreau and the rest of the league in terms of both actual success (goals) and the skill level that leads to that success (personal high-quality scoring chances).

All blessings to that little fellow. He is perfect. And by the way, he’s in a contract year. When you’re personally worth this many points in a given season, the team really ought to just get a blank check. In OT alone, Gaudreau has gotten them almost 16 percent of their point total for the season, to say nothing of his 17-23-40 in 48 in regulation. And again, OT success seems like a quality he’s capable of repeating over and over again in the long-term.

You’d hope, for their sake, that Brad Treliving has a crew of his teammates working around the clock to load money into a dump truck already.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Clayton Stoner was fined $10,000 and banned from hunting for three years because he killed and decapitated a grizzly bear. It was basically poaching. Which is bad.

Arizona Coyotes: The Coyotes and new Arizona State Division 1 NCAA hockey program seem close to getting a new arena in Tempe. Everything went great in Glendale, in my opinion.

Boston Bruins: I can assure you that this will not happen.

Buffalo Sabres: Who would have guessed that no longer playing for Patrick Roy would be beneficial to a player’s career?

Calgary Flames: Good lord you’re eight points out in your own garbage division. How are you not sure if you’re a seller yet? Come on.

Carolina Hurricanes: Eric Staal is having a pretty good year but if he thinks he deserves a raise on his current deal he’s out of his mind.

Chicago: The answer to this headline is, “He had one good postseason.” Happens way more often than it should. See also: Leino, Ville.

Colorado Avalanche: Hmm, no.

Columbus Blue Jackets: When you’re like, “Well at least we have Boone Jenner” — 17-13-30 in 51 games, but a 45.4 CF% — you’re really scrambling to find bright spots. Jenner is a perfectly okay player but if that’s a bright spot, yiiiiikes.

Dallas Stars: Lindy Ruff’s attitude of “Yeah we’re only three back of Chicago but I’m not sure they won’t kill us in the playoffs” is a reasonable one, all things considered.

Detroit Red Wings: I wonder why Mike Ilitch was so eager to get that new arena deal done at great expense to the taxpayers in a broke city: “All of the arena’s 52 luxury suites are already reserved. Their leasing rates will average around $300,000 per year.” How much of that $15.6 million per year goes to the city of Detroit, do you think?

Edmonton Oilers: Elliotte Friedman says the Oilers are still hot on the trail of Travis Hamonic, as a means of moving on from Future Norris Winner Justin Schultz (™ and © Craig MacTavish).

Florida Panthers: All-Star Weekend should really have just been a beautiful kiss to Jaromir Jagr, the beautiful man who is wonderful.

Los Angeles Kings: Nothing says “100 years of NHL hockey” like a market where news organizations were still getting star players’ names wrong two years ago.

Minnesota Wild: I wouldn’t go this far but they are aggressively only-slightly-better-than-average. This year is looking like another fun first-round bounce-out.

Montreal Canadiens: Isn’t it funny how Canada has a national crisis every time a team north of the border starts losing and they talk at length about the impact on interest in those markets, but they also make fun of southern markets for fans not showing up when their teams are awful? I wonder what the difference between these two conditions is. Could be anything, really?

Nashville Predators: One thing that should be helpful to Pekka Rinne was that all the goals he gave up this weekend meant it was no different from any other weekend all season.

New Jersey Devils: Worst player of the weekend goes to Cory Schneider for saving the John Scott spin-o-rama. Go to heck Cory!!!!!!

New York Islanders: Maybe the Isles should stop drafting Russians for a minute. See where that gets ’em.

New York Rangers: My takeaway from this article is that Ryan McDonagh just doesn’t have fun any more.

Ottawa Senators: The Sens are soon going to bid for land to build a new rink a lot closer to the city center. Which would be cool so we don’t have to listen to whining about “They’re so far away!!!” when talking about why no one goes to see a perpetually not-good team.

Philadelphia Flyers: Sean Couturier is on IR. More really great news for this team, huh?

Pittsburgh Penguins: Turns out guys on the Penguins think Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are good. Controversial, I know.

San Jose Sharks: Just using this headline to say, “Probably should have gotten three games for it.” That’s a good joke.

St. Louis Blues: Ken Hitchcock is playing coy when it comes to saying who’s the starter when Jake Allen gets back. Wink wink it’s totally not Jake Allen again wink wink wink.

Tampa Bay Lightning: When Marty Brodeur says he likes the way you handle the puck, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re an elite goaltender in this regard.

Toronto Maple Leafs: The new/old Leafs logo looks amazing. Frankly they never should have changed in the first place. Almost every logo change decision from like 1970-2010 was a bad one.

Vancouver Canucks: Peace and love to the Sedins, whom we won’t be able to treasure for too much longer.

Washington Capitals: I mean sure, be worried about Tampa and Montreal, but the gap here is, shall we say, considerable.

Winnipeg Jets: Man it’s really starting to look like they’ll let Andrew Ladd go. You’d have gotten real slim odds on that happening just a few months ago.

Play of the Weekend