I’m sure it sounded good when Kevin McGran wrote this about Leafs forward Rickard Wallin, but doesn’t it seem like he’s leaving out part of the story?
"Wallin has been a disappointment since signing from Sweden, and hasn't scored since the pre-lockout era."
First of all, Rickard Wallin has scored a few times since the lockout ended. In 204 regular season games over three years in Sweden and one in Switzerland, he has 60 goals. Conservatively, that rate would translate to ten goals in a full NHL season. During his NHL career, Wallin has averaged about one shot-per-game, so ten goals would correspond to a 12% shooting percentage.
But, so far this season – his first in the NHL since the lockout – Wallin is 0-for-39 shooting. That's a terrible stretch. But over the last seven seasons, fully 54% of NHL players have had an 0-for-39 stretch. Overall, they've shot 8.6%. These numbers include defensemen, so it overstates to some extent how many players go 0-for-39, but it also underestimates the true talent shooting level of the forwards in this group, which is above 10%.
So there are two issues here: 1) it was more than a little bit deceptive to tell us that Rickard Wallin didn't score during the four seasons following the lockout; neither did John Tavares! If a player isn't playing in the NHL, it's hard to hold that against him; 2) the fact that Wallin hasn't scored so far this season tells us very little about his shooting abilities. If we thought he was a 12% shooter, maybe he's really a 10% shooter. But we really only expected 10 goals from him in an 82-game season, and he's about 4 goals behind that pace – not yet a failure.
