Nick Robertson sure has looked good this season. He did in preseason, which means nothing as he did last year in preseason as well, and that is a thought to keep in the back of your mind: lower the competition level and he looks like a top-line, value-add player.
What is not in doubt ever about Robertson is that he works extremely hard, is extremely fit and strong and throws himself into every game to prove he belongs. I waited last year for that to wear off in the face of low minutes and unsuccessful assignments on what I called the junk drawer line. The line didn’t work, but he kept trying and that’s impressive.
That line: Max Domi as centre, Bobby McMann at wing and Robertson most of the time on the other wing was an interesting idea that borne out of a ration concept. Domi is a playmaking, pass-first centre who is weak in the defensive zone, McMann is a net driver with some offensive skills who is strong defensively and Robertson has a great shot and is actually faster than the other two, who both have good skating speed. It’s not a stupid idea, it just didn’t work.
McMann wasn’t good defensively, or not enough to balance the other two, Domi didn’t make plays so much as make obvious passes, and Robertson shot the puck a lot, largely from bad locations. So let’s start there. His shooting and its effects last year:
Five-on-five
This is halfway between the pattern you would see from a very high-volume offensive defenceman and a good forward. Notable are the large areas of heavy shot pressure with no goals, and the areas, what a shock!, near the net and in the slot where the puck went in.
His Individual Expected Goals rate last season (five-on-five to match the chart) was 0.62. That was eighth on the team for regular rostered players and was actually lower than Steven Lorentz. His shot rate (Corsi) was second on the team.
The line concept was failing because the key decision point of when to give away the puck (that’s what a shot is) was in Robertson’s or McMann’s hands and neither of them did well. We call the guy passing the puck the playmaker but the real boss of the show is the guy who shoots.
The results of Robertson’s play, isolated as best they can be, were telling a tale of disappointment.
I think you should just ignore the power-play side of this. I don’t think Robertson is ever going to be a great power-play forward, but every second unit needs shooters, so it is what it is. The key problem here is not the defence numbers – he shows well there for a winger, and that’s likely mostly his speed making zone exits work. Ditto the Corsi For impact, he got the puck a lot and a lot of shots ensued. But that massive drop in Expected Goals For compared to the Corsi is not just his bad shooting locations, it’s a general effect on everyone on the ice with him to have less effective offence. He made offence die. And that is not something you can figure out from goal scoring rates or shot rates alone.
A lot of that process that led to the dying offence was very visible to viewers, and even with the hazy glow that surrounds Robertson and leads to gushing over every success in some quarters, coupled with the inverse around Domi, he likely took too much blame because he was usually the decision maker. Almost equally bathed in glow is Bobby McMann, and he shoots a lot too, but was just better enough to escape much negative attention.
This pattern of shooting, the results it led to and the obvious on-ice choices that caused it all was typical of Robertson in 2023-2024 as well. But so far this season, it all looks different.
To begin, the same shot chart:
You can easily see that this is proportionally more tilted towards shots of a higher quality. Or if you can’t, because sometimes that is hard to parse visually, his Individual Expected Goals is at 1.00 so far this year, second on the team to only Auston Matthews. His shot rate is also second to Matthews as it was last season.
And the RAPM chart for this almost 150 minutes played:
Well, that’s different, isn’t it? I would again ignore the power-play and defence values, as defence impacts from wingers isn’t going to be large and this measure of it is likely the least meaningful thing on the chart.
What is frankly stunning is the difference in xGF impact. Again, this is not his personal shooting quality, and it’s not his on-ice xGF either, it’s a measure of his impact on the overall quality and volume of shooting, and that is really all you need to see in a winger given his role on a scoring line. He’s not there to be great, he’s there to add value at the one thing that matters most. And he has been.
Why now all of a sudden?
He told reporters that he thinks it’s just more opportunity and better zone starts. So that’s a thing to consider. While RAPM attempts to isolate impacts, that’s Auston Matthews he’s playing with most of the time. He has some third-line minutes, but only about 40 of his 150 is away from the top six.
Please don’t run off and look up zone starts, though. That might tell you a little bit about how the coach has used him, but it won’t tell you if he’s actually in the offensive zone more. Most shifts start on the fly, and zone starts have the tiniest impact on player results of all the things adjusted for in models like RAPM.
NHL Edge has zone time data. In order to serve you better, they removed the options to show that at even-strength, so all we have is all-situations, so that’s goosed for a power-play forward who does not PK. Last year Robertson was at 41.4% defensive zone and 40.7% offensive zone with 18% of his time in the neutral zone. This year it’s 40.2% defensive zone and 40.7% offensive zone with the difference coming in the neutral zone at 19% this year.
Players are no better at eye-testing their own zone time than you or I are. The Leafs in general have a neutral zone problem where they get stuck there, but it is true that relative to the team, he’s not in the defensive zone as much. He is not spending more time in the offensive zone, though.
It has to come back to the decision moments. The big choice to pass or shoot. He is shooting at his normal very high rate, but he is also passing more, and more effectively. Of course, that’s easier to do if you’re passing to top quality players.
This is an issue inherent with any isolated results models of any kind – one you make up in your head after you’ve looked up box cars and zone starts, one that’s complex and well tested, one that’s opaque and difficult to understand – the player has a limit on him, and that limit is what is possible to have happen with the teammates he has. There is, in other words, only so much potential for impact on certain linemates. We expect opportunity to make goals go up, and we very, very (always) confuse that with player value improving. That prospect now on the power play has not changed, he just is in a different context that his results previously might have only hinted at. Something similar happens with a model like RAPM.
It is absolutely true that Robertson has had hints for years that there could or maybe should be more he can offer. His preseason play, the fact he succeeded in the AHL at 19, the fact he could play at all in the NHL a year later as one of the shortest players in the league. The optimistic belief-based take here is that those hints are coming true.
The trouble is there isn’t really any evidence for that. And I know that when I say there is no evidence that the sky actually is purple, what people hear is me saying the sky is not purple and to think so is to be a big dummy. And yet, no, that’s not what it means. The purpleness is unproven and is in the box with the cat. And Nick Robertson.
Go back and look at that shot chart (pretend I spent an hour with GIMP making this year’s transparent so I could superimpose it). You can find all those shots in last year’s pattern. You could, in fact make a pattern with the same number of dots as this year’s out of last year’s in any configuration from best in the NHL to worst. Best in the NHL right now is Anders Lee with 2 ixG/60. Ryan Reaves is eleventh at 1.51.
There’s a couple of reasons why even Lee’s 162 minutes isn’t enough to judge from. One is that hockey is scheduled in a way that teams might play a lot of weaker competition or a lot of home games in any given run of a dozen games. These impacts are very small overall in a season, but they loom large in one month. The other reason is that life doesn’t happen in a clockwork fashion. Humans have to impose that kind of structure on reality, and hockey resists the imposition very strongly. Or as Matthews puts it: sometimes shit happens. Sometimes rainbows and unicorns happen too.
Right now, so far, Nick Robertson has had great results, and is making good decisions while also doing that fast skating, hard working routine that is routine for him. Will he keep that up? There’s only one way to find out.
