David Pastrnak: 2019/20 Fantasy Season Recap & 2020/21 Projection

Welcome back for the third installment of my series on the top NHL fantasy hockey players of 2019/20, where I dive deep into how they performed this year and try to project what their 2020/21 season might look like. You can go back and read my previous article on Connor McDavid here. Let’s get some basics on Pastrnak out of the way…

Age: 23

Position: RW

Unofficial Attractiveness Score (as judged by my wife): 4/10

Pastrnak has consistently grown his game year over year, but exploded this season to a level few NHL players have ever achieved. Most notable was the jump to a league-leading 48 goals when his previous high was 38 (albeit in 4 less games). I invested eight minutes in watching all 48 of those goals and counted maybe five or six goals that could be considered lucky but the vast majority looked like pure goal-scorer’s goals. Let’s break it down a little more:

We start with IPP as usual, where Pastrnak was up to 78.51% which is the highest mark of any full NHL season he’s played, but not totally out of line with his 2018/19 mark of 75%. His TOI/GP was in line with 2018/19 but did include a 22-second/game increase in PP time. His assist rates look nearly identical to 2018/19 so the increase in production can be pretty much solely attributed to the increase in goals for. This drives me to place more emphasis than normal on the individual chance-for stats (ixG, iCF, iFF, iSCF, & iHCF) to see if Pastrnak generated more chances in 2019/20 than before or just converted more of them. As we can see across the board he generated far more chances in 2019/20 than ever before, which lends credence to the possibility that this could just be Pastrnak’s new normal. He did shoot 1% better than in 18/19 for a third straight career-high, but also generated more than an extra shot/60.

Going a little deeper, Pastrnak did not get a big boost on the power play, which can sometimes be an unsustainable improvement. The Bruins powerplay in general has been a top-flight unit the entire time Pastrnak has been on it, and it’s hard to predict a significant regression there. 5-on-5 Pastrnak actually generated significant more chances per 60 than 2018/19 and really it looks like this is a player that has leveled up for the second time in as many years. He may get a little less lucky in shooting % and IPP% in 2020/21, but the underlying stats suggest Pastrnak was just a better player in 2019/20 than in 2018/19 and there’s no reason to suggest he’ll regress significantly in the near future. He also benefits from playing for a top-flight team with top-flight linemates in a very secure situation, which is very important when evaluating floor for your fantasy draft 1st round picks.

I’d put Pastrnak’s floor right around 100 points for the 2020/21 season assuming an 82-game season, with a ceiling around 113 points (he produced at a 111-point pace this year). I’m probably more bullish than most will be on Pasta, but he looks like a top-5 scorer in the league for the foreseeable future.

2020/21 Projection: 82 GP, 49 G, 55 A, 104 PTS

TL;DR

• The Pasta tastes real good
• Underlying stats make this level of production look legit, especially 5-on-5
• Will probably come just off his 111-point-pace of 2019/20 due to slight IPP% & S% regressions

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Thanks for reading, you are much appreciated!

NGN