Last year, it was a pleasant surprise to see Brock Nelson’s production reach new heights. This year, he’s projected to blow those 53 points out of the water.
With Nelson’s production this season, I’ve often defaulted to saying it’s a bit unsustainable. After never being able to produce anything more than about a 45 P/82 pace in his first five NHL seasons, he finally passed the 50-point mark. Now he’s on pace for about 65 points.
Despite thinking it was unsustainable, I'll say I was impressed with Nelson right from the get-go this year. In the first few games where New York didn't look great and Mathew Barzal started slow, I thought Nelson was the best player on the team. Since then, he's kept up the pace.
Something interesting here is his shooting percentage. Often when a player is outproducing his usual pace, his shooting percentage is quite a bit higher than normal, resulting in more goals/points. But with Nelson, his shooting percentage of 12 per cent is actually lower this year than it’s been in three of the last four seasons. He’s already accumulated nine multi-point games as well.
A huge factor here is simply the opportunity he’s gotten this season. He’s averaging 18:46 TOI/GP (15:13 at ES), higher than last year’s 17:58/GP (14:46 at ES) and way, way up from 2017-18 where he averaged just 14:44 TOI/GP (12:16 at ES), while John Tavares was present. The fact is that Nelson is taking advantage of his increased opportunity and I’d imagine that as long as the opportunity is present, Nelson will continue to produce.
One other area where Nelson has seemingly taken steps to round out his game: faceoffs. He’s won less than 48.5% of draws in all six of his NHL seasons but this year, he’s been on a different level, winning almost 53% of draws.
The bottom line is that Nelson really looks to be becoming more of an integral part of the offensive unit. If he can continue to produce at this rate, he’ll be a key forward on the Islanders for years to come.
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