Tonight, since the Maple Leafs will take on the Colorado Avalanche, it feels prudent to take a deep dive into the former Avalanche, Alexander Kerfoot. We’re not here to rehash the debate on whether the trade that brought Kerfoot here was a good one. That’s a tired debate, a dead horse, and it hinges too much on how much you value one season of Tyson Barrie.
Instead, we’re going to talk about Alex Kerfoot outside of that trade, and not in comparison with Nazem Kadri, for once. Or at least, we’re going to try to.
His season this year so far has been a good one and it deserves highlighting.
In terms of production, Kerfoot has been the best forward on the team outside of the core four, with 21 points in all situations. His line with John Tavares and William Nylander has been incredible overall, as well, with those three players leading the team in even strength points, as shown in the table from QuantHockey below.

But, looking a bit deeper into that, the below table from Evolving Hockey shows that William Nylander has 0 secondary assists at evens; all 21 of his even strength points this season are primary points. That’s somewhat incredible. He is either the primary passer or the scorer for every goal that that line has scored at even strength.

But, this isn’t another Nylander love fest, as much as I could write on that subject. On that line, Tavares and Kerfoot are each more balanced, with 4-6-7-20 and 8-7-6-24 stat lines at even strength.
This is Staturday, so we’re going to go further than production to see just what Kerfoot’s up to this year. One tool we have is the Environment Distiller tool from HockeyViz. For a look at how these and other fancy stats work, check out my advanced stats primer Part 2.

We can see above that they have been really strong the offensive side of the puck. They have created 32% more than league average expected goals, which is fantastic …

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Author: Ryan Hobart / The Leafs Nation