Hockey: NC State Recap

The Oregon Ducks hockey team made a cross country trip to North Carolina this past weekend for what was scheduled as a 3 game weekend road trip. 1 game against ACCHL contender NC State and then 2 games against UNC who is 2nd to last in the same conference.

Due to inclement weather the games against UNC ended up being cancelled and the Ducks played a 2 game weekend double header against NC State.

Sadly neither game was live streamed on YouTube but thankfully the Friday game was streamed on ESPN+ and extended highlights were posted here

The Ducks appear to have lost 2 competitive games to a pretty good team losing the Friday game 7-4 and the Saturday game 4-2 although I would like to be able to watch the complete games before being able to comment on if the score was reflective of the nature of the game.

In place of guessing at how the games went I thought I would use this weeks article to break down some individual stats from the entire season thus far.

Individual point production in Hockey is a bit of a Beginner —> Intermediate —> Expert Knowledge curve. On an individual game by game basis points can be very misleading as the sample size is very small. But over an entire season point production goes from very misleading to incredibly informative as more and more data is collected. Put simply over an entire season the best players will eventually find a way to put up good individual point production, regardless of the situation they are in.

For the data lovers of ATQ you would be fascinated to learn that some of the best NHL prospect ranking systems are entirely mathematical stat based models that factor in:

1. Point production
2. Player age (down to the month)
3. League player is playing in

To project future NHL players and superstars these models often outperform scouts using their eyes and experience with the game. If you are interested in learning more @ByronMBader and @nickiacoban are great follows on X.

It all starts with simple point production though so bringing it back to the Ducks here are the individual point per game leaders for Oregon this season. First the Forwards

Forwards

What jumps off the page immediately are 3 Ducks averaging over a point per game lead by Jackson Henningsgard’s monster season. Before this season the Ducks highest per game point producer the past 2 seasons was Mica Glass’ 0.86 points per game in 23-24. This year alone the Ducks have 3 players producing at a higher rate than that with:

1. Jackson Henningsgard – Senior – 1.61 points per game
2. Inde Abersch – Freshmen – 1.42 points per game
3. Noah Easterson – Sophomore – 1.06 points per game

In the off-season I will probably go back to the 23-24 season and begin to compile the individual data on players so that I can see trends year over year as players gain more experience at the ACHA division 1 level. This will help me contextualize what the production of younger players likely indicates and give clues on how they will progress.

For now to keep it simple it is incredibly encouraging to see 2 under class-men produce over a point per game, and Oregon’s 4-8 forward point producers all averaging over 0.5 points per game and are all also underclassmen.

Defensemen

The past two seasons former Duck Nick Slayton lead the way for Defensemen averaging approximately 0.6 points per game the past two years. This year the Ducks don’t have a Defensemen contributing points to that degree as here are their 3 leaders in point production on the back-end:

1. Austin Kluksdahl – Freshmen – 0.47 Points per game
2. Colin Gabriel – Freshmen – 0.37 Points per game
3. Carson Steich – Sophomore – 0.33 Points per game

Kluksdahl has been very interesting to watch this year, as his first shift in an exhibition game he attempted his best Cale Makar impression but turned it over and resulted in an odd-man rush chance against. From then I haven’t noticed him very much offensively but I have been noting a lot of nifty defensive plays every game that never show up on the box score. So to still see him leading the way offensively as a freshmen was interesting to me as it appears the Ducks may have a very strong 2 way defensemen for the next 3 years.

Freshmen standout from last year Carson Streich has seen a drop in his production thus far going from 0.54 points per game last year to 0.33 this year. However whenever I have a chance to watch him I haven’t noted any drop off in his play from the eye test leading me to believe I think he may be due for some better luck in the box scores down the stretch of this season.

As goalies don’t produce points this article won’t have much commentary for them, but I have been tracking save percentage and a very crude Goals Saved Above/Below expected based on high danger chances that I will discuss at the end of the season.

Goals by Line

After the two exhibition games Coach Hyman has settled into a Top 6 forwards of the following that he has mostly stuck to for that games I have been able to watch

Henningsgard (SR) – Ebott (FR) – Abersh (FR)

Easterson (SO) – Aneslmo (FR) – Chapman (SO)

Here are the goals for, for each of those lines in proportion to the entire team

Henninsgard (13) – Ebott (7) – Abersch (9) = 29 43%

Easterson (8) – Anselmo (4) – Chapman (8) = 20 29%

Rest of the team = 19 28%

In a perfectly ideal world the goal distribution from these 3 groups should be about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. The Ducks this season have been somewhat close to that indicating that despite Henningsgard and a talented group of Sophomores and Freshmen having strong individual seasons their still is good depth from top to bottom of the Ducks lineup with the defense contributing a healthy amount to goal production as well.

Despite the strong season of Henningsgard it would be unfair to characterize this Duck team as a top-heavy one trick pony which is another positive sign heading into next year when the majority of the team returning.

Up Next

The Ducks have the next two weekends off but will return to the Ice February 13th and 14th at the Rink Exchange in Eugene for their final 2 home games of the season when they take on Oakland.

Sco Ducks!