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Montreal Canadiens 2021-22 Forward Ratings: Christian Dvorak

Firstly, let me acknowledge how hard I was on Christian Dvorak last year. Nor was I overly impressed with the trade in the first place after looking at his advanced metrics last summer.

I ran him through a similar model last year using Arizona as the base, and he scored fairly low. I felt that if he had some of the lower numbers on an already bad team, he was a major contributing factor to the team’s poor performance.

It seems as if this year he was determined to not be part of the problem, scoring 62.7% in the model and coming in at number four. It was a decent feat in a year when he battled a lot of injuries.

That being said, the way he managed to make it this high up this list is not sustainable in my opinion. He had the third-worst Corsi-for percentage, and sixth-worst expected-goals-for percentage.

In every other metric he takes a major leap, having the sixth-best goals-for-percentage, third-best points per 60, and most defensive zone faceoffs per 60.

Those faceoffs could do a lot to explain the poor shot share and xGF%, but it’s not realistic to expect a repeat of being top three in points if those numbers don’t improve.

At the beginning of the the year, like a lot of players on the team, Dvorak looked completely lost. He showed steady signs of improvement as the year progressed despite being hampered by injury on a few occasions. Having him for three more years under $4.5 million should be considered pretty desirable. If that’s as a trade chip or to anchor a line in Montreal, he’s a great value in the flat-cap era.

For more info on the model I used, check out the introduction to this series.

#4: Christian Dvorak
#5 Nick Suzuki
#6: Tyler Toffoli
#7: Jonathan Drouin
#8: Cole Caufield
#9: Michael Pezzetta
#10: Josh Anderson
#11: Rem Pitlick
#12: Mike Hoffman
#13: Joel Armia
#14: Ryan Poehling
#15: Laurent Dauphin
#16: Paul Byron

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