Thompson continues his incredible rise with Sabres

A lot of ink has been spilled on Buffalo Sabres centre Tage Thompson. It’s not often a player goes from depth fourth-line option to one of the premier scorers in the National Hockey League. It’s even more rare when a player sustains that type of performance.

We have talked about finding hidden gems around the league in years past, my favourite recent example being what the Vegas Golden Knights found in Chandler Stephenson. Stephenson’s agility and pace of play brought him into the league, but his usage rate was always low, and the Washington Capitals never figured out a way to unlock more from a talented player.

Stephenson was eventually traded to Vegas for a fifth-round pick, and the rest became history – the Golden Knights paired the super-agile Stephenson with two-way dynamo Mark Stone, and Stephenson has established himself as a top-six scorer since that point in time.

In Stephenson’s case, it was about usage and teammate chemistry. Putting more talent with a player who had a very unique and defining skill unlocked a lot more offensive potential.

That brings us back to Thompson. The Sabres, having acquired him five years ago now, were frustrated with his slow development and even slower offensive production. Head coach Don Granato opted to move him from the wing to the middle of the ice before the start of the 2021-22 season – a last-ditch effort of sorts to salvage the player. What a decision that would become.

Since the start of the 2021-22 season, Thompson has been one of the most prolific scorers in the league. Compare his career trend to that of supernova scorer Connor McDavid in Edmonton and look at how silly this has become. Thompson has, for a calendar year now, been outscoring the best player in the world on a per-60 minute basis:

Some of this scoring surge, like in Stephenson’s case, may tie back to usage rates and teammate quality – not only is Thompson seeing more ice time, but he’s now skating with the likes of Alex Tuch, Jeff Skinner, and Rasmus Dahlin. That’s a far cry from fourth-line forwards and third-pairing defencemen.

It’s also owed in part to some shooting luck. We can be sure that Thompson isn’t the same calibre player who sustained six per cent shooting early in his career but sustaining a conversion rate of 19 per cent (as is the case this season) also seems like a tall order. 

But it’s still quite rare to see a player score at such an electric rate after such observable offensive weakness in his early developmental years. How rare? Consider all of the forwards who have seen similar usage rates prior to their age-23 seasons, and then consider how they scored in their age-23 and 24 seasons – or Thompson’s breakout years.

This sample looks at forwards over just the past five seasons, in part because I want to make an apples-to-apples comparison in the current heightened scoring era:

You can see that the vast majority of young forwards (a) see their scoring improve as they enter their peak performance years and (b) that rate of change is rather small, with the median forward seeing about a six percentage point improvement in goal scoring. Consider where Thompson ranks on both fronts:

-         Thompson is second in percentage improvement, trailing only Anaheim’s Troy Terry, perhaps the only player with a comparable breakout to the Sabres centre.

-         Thompson is second in goals per 60 minutes (age 23 and 24 seasons), trailing only Toronto’s Auston Matthews, perhaps the best goal scorer in the world.

Rare breakouts like this are fascinating for numbers nerds, but they should fascinate everyone in the hockey community. If nothing else, it’s a lesson that there is an extraordinary balancing act between aggressive player development and patience with development curves, which are never linear and different for every player. It’s also a comment to how important coaching and organizational strategy can be.

If Thompson doesn’t change positions, and if the Sabres don’t arm his line with talent, we may never have witnessed such impressive performance.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz