NHL Players On Track To Crush Career Bests Early In 2023-24 Season

After an unusually busy Monday-night schedule of nine games wrapped up with a Vegas Golden Knights shootout win over the Montreal Canadiens, the National Hockey League is now officially more than one-tenth of the way through its 2023-24 regular season.

Yes, it’s still early. But some interesting trends are starting to take hold.

Here’s a look at four players who are outdoing themselves in the early going. And while it’s certainly possible that these players may see their numbers regress to more normal levels as the season goes along, this group could make some marks in the record books if it keeps doing what it’s doing.

Jack Hughes – New Jersey Devils

8 GP, 5-13-18

Last season was a breakout year for the first-overall pick from 2019. Jack Hughes hit regular-season career highs with 43 goals and 99 points, then showed he could handle heavy hockey as he helped his New Jersey Devils win their first playoff series since 2012.

Because injuries limited him to 56 points in 49 games in the 2021-22 season, Hughes’ progression last year looked even more dramatic than it was. But his rate of production did improve from a year earlier — from 1.14 to 1.27 points per game.

This year, the 22-year-old has nearly doubled that number. Through Oct. 30, Hughes is leading the NHL with 18 points, an average of 2.25 points per game. That’s miles above Connor McDavid’s league-leading 153 points from last year (1.87 PPG), which itself was the most productive season since Mario Lemieux’s 161 points in 1995-96.

Hughes is currently on pace for a brain-melting 184 points this year. Chances are, he’ll cool off at some point. But if he doesn’t, he’ll slot into seventh place all time, behind only Wayne Gretzky (five times) and Lemieux (once).

In the second year of an eight-year contract extension that carries a cap hit of $8 million per CapFriendly, Hughes is tied with seven other players for the 59th-highest cap hit in the NHL this season. He is already delivering significant value for a Devils team that is making a case for itself as a serious Stanley Cup contender.

Frank Vatrano – Anaheim Ducks

9 GP, 9-1-10

One of the hottest sticks in the league this year belongs to a 29-year-old journeyman from East Longmeadow, Mass., who has never scored more than 24 goals in a season.

The way Frank Vatrano is going, he could reach a new career high by early December. With two hat tricks in his first eight games, Vatrano is averaging a goal a game under new coach and fellow Bostonian Greg Cronin. And the Anaheim Ducks, who finished dead last in the NHL standings last season, are out to a very respectable 5-4-0 start.

Vatrano’s nine goals tie him for the NHL lead with new Detroit Red Wing Alex DeBrincat — a two-time 41-goal man with the Chicago Blackhawks who is having a resurgent season of his own now that he’s back in his home state.

DeBrincat is in the first year of a new four-year deal with a cap hit of $7.875 million.

Out in Southern California, Vatrano earns not even half of that. He’s in the second season of a three-year contract that carries a cap hit of $3.65 million.

At one goal per game, the math is easy: Vatrano is on pace for 82 goals this season. Again, for context, Connor McDavid’s 64 goals last season were the most since Alex Ovechkin hit 65 in the 2007-08 season, and the 25th-most of all time.

Only three players have ever scored more than 80 goals in a season: Gretzky (twice, peaking at 92), Lemieux (85 in 1988-89) and Brett Hull (86 in 1990-91).

Nathan MacKinnon – Colorado Avalanche

8 GP, 47 shots on goal, 5.88 shots per game

Nathan MacKinnon has always been a high-volume shooter. Before the pandemic pause, he led the NHL in shots in both 2018-19 (365 shots in 82 games, 4.45 shots per game) and 2019-20 (318 shots in 69 games, 4.61 shots per game).

Over his career, he has taken 2,814 shots in 717 games, or 3.92 shots per game.

Early this season, MacKinnon is blowing those numbers out of the water. His 47 shots in eight games work out to 5.88 per game, a rate which is nearly unprecedented.

Only three players have ever beaten that number with at least 10 games played in a season, and two of them were legends who did it a long time ago.

Phil Esposito holds the record with 550 shots in 78 games in the 1970-71 season with the Boston Bruins — the year he got 76 goals. That works out to 7.05 shots per game and a shooting percentage of 13.8%.

Six years earlier, Bobby Hull averaged 6.03 shots a game with the Chicago Blackhawks. He scored 39 goals in 61 games in 1964-65 at a rate of 10.6%.

The only player in the modern era that has beaten MacKinnon’s number over a full season was Alexander Ovechkin in 2008-09. With 56 goals on 528 shots over 79 games, he averaged 6.68 shots a game, also with a shooting percentage of 10.6%.

Though the Colorado Avalanche have been shut out in their last two games, MacKinnon is sitting at four goals. His shooting percentage so far is 8.5% – below his career average of 10.2% and below last season’s conversion rate of 11.5%, when he hit a new career high with 42 goals.

Now in the first season of an eight-year contract extension, MacKinnon’s cap hit of $12.6 million is tops in the league. If he keeps putting pucks on net at the rate that he has been, more goals will certainly come.

Jonathan Quick – New York Rangers

2 GP, 2-0-0, 0.41 goals-against average, .982 save percentage

At 37, Jonathan Quick has had a ton of success in his NHL career. The two-time Stanley Cup winner and 2012 Conn Smythe Trophy winner is 23rd all time in games played (756) and 17th in wins (377). And after the Los Angeles Kings chose to end their long relationship with him at the 2023 trade deadline, Quick moved back closer to his home base of Connecticut when he signed a bargain one-year contract with the New York Rangers on July 1. The cap hit is just $825,000 plus $100,000 in performance bonuses.

New coach Peter Laviolette has installed a tight defensive structure on Broadway, and the Rangers are among the league leaders in fewest shots allowed per game. That has set up a perfect environment for Quick as backup to 2022 Vezina Trophy winner Igor Shesterkin.

Quick stopped all nine shots he faced in 26:07 in his Rangers debut, relieving Shesterkin in a 4-1 loss to the Nashville Predators on Oct. 19. That steadied the ship and set the stage for what is now a five-game win streak that has allowed the Rangers to climb into the top tier of the NHL standings.

During the winning streak, Quick earned a 4-1 win in Seattle and a 3-0 shutout victory in Edmonton. So far, he has stopped 56 of 57 shots he has faced for a brain-bending goals-against average of 0.41 — nearly five times better than the 1.95 GAA that earned him second place in the Vezina Trophy voting in 2011-12.