Let's talk about Mat Barzal

The limitations of the "Pass it to Will" approach.

Since I began All Three Zones in 2016, there are few players I’ve enjoyed watching more than Mathew Barzal. The confidence that he plays with and his ability to gain the blue line at will makes my job more fun. It’s also a skill not many guys have. Sure, most stars are good at zone entries but few do it with the same frequency or efficiency as Barzal.

It’s been consistent over his career.

For context, most players will enter the zone with control of the puck about 2-3 times a game. An average game for Barzal is about 5-6 and it’s pretty common for him to hit double digits in this stat. You might say “so what,” but it means that he’s the one commanding the play and the puck is on his stick for most of the game. Again, there aren’t a lot of guys in the NHL who can do this, even the star players. The tide has started to shift with the league’s skill level on the rise but Barzal still finds himself on an island amongst his peers.

This particular chart is important because it adds a new layer to zone entry tracking, which are entries that lead to scoring chances. It’s another area where Barzal stands out and shows that he isn’t just turning the puck over after gaining the line or orbitting the offensive zone while doing nothing of substance. You’re getting tangible results from him, which is why I’m so fascinated with how he isn’t at least one of the 10 best forwards in the league. He got some recognition in the Islanders last two playoff runs, guiding them to back-to-back Conference Finals where he was unquestionably the team’s best forward. That said, you won’t see him near the top of anyone’s lists. This year you’d probably have to dig into at least the 30’s to find him.

Whether it’s by traditional points or by overall impact stats like Evolving Wild’s Goals Above Replacement, Barzal hasn’t been in “star” territory since his rookie year despite doing so many good things individually. A couple weeks ago we talked about Paul Stastny as a player whose microstats & overall impact stats disagreed. Barzal could be in that class too, if only because he is one of the best players in the league when it comes to making plays with the puck and a lower-tier player going by macro-level stats.

Although his entire micro-stat profile shows where some of the disconnect is.

Barzal is an oustanding player but he doesn’t have a complete profile. He is one of the best in the league at creating in transition. A low percentage of his entries led to scoring chances but from a volume standpoint, he was among the best. You’re not going to hit a home run on every shift, so Barzal having a lot of kicks at the can is a good thing, especially with this type of workload. Controlled entries lead to more scoring chances & more goals, which means you want the puck on Barzal’s stick more times than not.

The passing category, however, is more of a mixed bag. Again, he is one of the best players in the league from a volume standpoint. Only Connor McDavid & Brad Marchand setup more shots than him. Other players in his company here include; Mark Scheifele, Mark Stone, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Johnny Gaudreau. Elite players from an impact or point production standpoint. Not that Barzal hasn’t produced, but his scoring rate was closer to the likes of Adam Henrique and Bryan Rust than the top players in the league. Some of it was bad luck, as last season was a down year for him, but you’d figure someone who is so good at creating quick-strike offense and setting up teammates would be closer to the Top 10.

Part of this is because Barzal is still kind of a one-dimensional player offensively. He doesn’t shoot often and while he isn’t exactly Joe Thornton, he still relies heavily on his teammates to convert chances to goals. This is what being a playmaker is all about and unfortunately, it puts part of the game out of your control because sometimes you have to be paired with the right complementary players instead of just anyone who can shoot or receive a pass. A closer look at the passing section of Barzal’s player card shows where some of the struggles were.

A down year for Barzal is still pretty good, but it’s interesting how someone who is this good at passing had such a difficult time setting up scoring chances, most notably “high danger plays” that either crossed the slot or were from behind the goal line. This means that most of Barzal’s shot assists were off short, give-and-go passes or plays where the recepient had to skate to open space rather than have something setup on a tee. He also setup an ungodly amount of point shots, a staple of the Isles system under Barry Trotz. It’s a sound strategy when you’re looking to create sustained offense but not the most efficient unless you have a team that’s excellent at shooting for tips & rebounds. This is the Isles bread & butter for offense and while it works to a point, it might waste some of what makes Barzal great because you limit him to a half-rink game instead of having him playing with speed.

Take note of how Barzal grades out in terms of “rush offense” compared to how often he enters the zone. You would expect someone who enters the zone that much to be with the McDavids, Gaudreaus & Kaprizovs of the league instead of in the second tier where Barzal is.

This has been a theme for him since his outstanding rookie season. Compare this:

To this:

Some of this is about getting older and defenders knowing your tendencies more. Barzal can still do the things that make him special, but he has less space to work with compared to his rookie year. You see him exchange with a defenseman instead of attacking the net, waiting for a play to develop instead of going off instinct and looking for the safer option. It’s not the worst thing because you’re ultimately playing keep-away with the puck, but again, you have to be very rigit with connecting the dots for it to work. It’s interesting because the game becomes less about talent and more about finding the right pieces to complement eachother.

It’s a strategy that has worked with Barzal before, as he’s produced at a decent clip in past years, but it was kind of a mess last season. Some of the more granular passing data illustrates this well.

In the 36 games tracked, Barzal assisted on 147 shots, 87 of them went to a defenseman (almost 60%). Part of this was due to the Isles shuffling their lines around and him just not having much chemistry with any of his wingers. Even a mainstay like Anders Lee struggled to connect with Barzal on direct plays & most of their goals were off broken scrambles like in the second video. Replacing Eberle on the right flank was tougher than they anticipated & nobody really emerged as a secondary outlet for Barzal. The Isles had plenty of shoot-first players (Lee, Palmieri, Wahlstrom, Bellows) but lacked puck carriers on the wing. The closest they had was Anthony Beauvillier, who spent most of the year as Brock Nelson’s winger, and most of the other options are touch-and-go type of players who are more useful when the puck is already in the zone rather than someone who can help Barzal attack with speed.

As a result, you had Barzal playing mostly a one-man game, throwing pucks to the point and hoping something would materialize out of that instead of working with his linemates. Pictures tell a better story.

There’s a common theme with these clips, the most obvious one is that Barzal’s first movement after entering the zone is to pull up & wait for a better option. There was only one play where he could directly attack the net (after Bailey set him up with a touch pass) and maybe three total plays where he directly attacked off the rush. Most of the other clips he had to pivot because there was either no passing options with him or he wanted everyone to get setup in the zone. Some of this is bad habits but another part of it is just how the Islanders play. The clip against the Oilers is a great example.

Watch where the wingers go. Both Bailey & Lee made a bee-line to the front of the net and the Isles went around the clock with their passing sequence because it was the only play open. They get a decent chance out of it, but it’s one the Oilers are okay with giving up because they blocked off the slot play to Lee and won the box-out in front of the net. Barzal had a nice rush into the zone but the Isles couldn’t do much with it.

Part of this is just what the flow of the game dicates and it goes back to how you breakout of the zone or how you counter. Rush offense isn’t created equal, there’s striking off counter-attacks where you’re beating a forecheck and there’s attacking off regroups where you’re attacking a defense that’s set in formation. Watch the clips from Barzal’s rookie season and you’ll see more of the former, whereas last year he had to revert to long cycles because the Isles weren’t as efficient with breaking out of the zone & the defending team had time to at least get back and play contain against him.

This is a tough conundrum for coaches because in order to create some of these chances you have to survive a defensive breakdown. The Islanders play a more controlled game under Trotz and opportunities like this don’t happen as often, which is a trade-off most players will take. As electric as Barzal was in his rookie year, he was a bad defensive player and the Isles were not a good team. Since then, the team has improved and Barzal has settled in as the Isles top-line center while not reaching the heights some hoped he would get to after his rookie season. Last year, however, felt like a turning point. The team around him got weaker but instead of the games opening up, they played the same conservative way with worse results.

Now they’re at a fork in the road. Barzal’s in the final year of his bridge deal, they moved on from Barry Trotz, replacing him from within with Lane Lambert, and didn’t make any changes at forward over the summer. It’s fair to wonder how much more the Isles can get out of Barzal with this setup. System adjustments can help but there’s only so much they can do if they’re expecting him to carry a 38-year-old Zach Parise and Kyle Palmieri. A silver lining to last years was that Barzal showed some chemistry with the Isles defense beyond just setting up point shots. Particularly with Noah Dobson.

The way Dobson reads the game and always thinks offense caters to Barzal’s skillset perfectly. He’s what friend of the blog, Jack Han, would call a “sprinter” or the second guy in the rush, giving Barzal a passing option or someone to help back off the defenders even if they’re setup. It’s frustrating for the Isles because if they had another forward who played with this mindset, they would have a good running mate for Barzal.

Maybe this is a point of emphasis for the team heading into this year? Get Barzal with some faster players (hi Anthony Beauvillier) or have the team play with more pace in general, which is going to take some major line reconstruction to get right. I can’t see Zach Parise or Kyle Palmieri flying up and down the ice like Beauvillier & Eberle did in Barzal’s rookie year. Wahlstrom is a little more plausible even if he is coming off a rough sophomore year.

It’s more likely they follow a similar method to last year but maybe take a play out of Tampa Bay’s playbook with using more motion with screens & using more rotation high in the zone. I’m not sure if it gets a 90-point season out of Barzal with the supporting cast being what it is, but they are entering this year with a younger defense corps & have something special with Dobson so it’s worth a try. If anything it adds a new wrinkle to what was a vanilla offense & emphasizes something Barzal was great at last year while not completely nuking their system.

Final Thoughts

I’m a firm believer in skill eventually winning out when it comes to players like Barzal. Nathan MacKinnon had a couple of years where he was stuck in that “great but not elite” tier while posting fantastic microstats. Eventually that translated to the big picture. The same goes for other stars like Gaudreau, Eichel and Barkov. They more or less got there after a few years of great process. The question with Barzal is if he’s going to be the one-way, high-end point producer like Mark Scheifele or a guy who is a workhorse with the puck and sets the table for the rest of the team while not getting the star level point totals (i.e. Nikolaj Ehlers).

The state of the Isles roster and Barzal’s reluctance to shoot the puck makes his outlook kind of scary, but I also believe that the star players will find a way if they’re good enough.