Nazem Kadri Has Stepped Up to the Challenge and Delivered for Young Leafs

After seeing a huge rise in his individual shot attempts last year coupled with the worst full season of shooting percentage he's ever had, Nazem Kadri faced a fair amount of criticism despite leading that sad sack Maple Leafs team in points with 45.

This season, Kadri's shots are down a little bit in raw form because he's getting a little bit less ice time now that he's sharing the spotlight with super rookies Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and Mitch Marner, as well as a healthy James van Riemsdyk. But Kadri is still firing over 18 shot attempts at the net per 60 minutes at 5-vs-5, however, and his shooting percentage has regressed, netting him his first 30-goal season, well above his previous career-high mark of 20 set during the 2013-14 campaign.

What's most impressive about Kadri's consistently strong play this season is how he's been deployed by head coach Mike Babcock.

The Maple Leafs are in a weird position from a roster construction standpoint, with seven rookies as regulars in their lineup. That heavy emphasis on breaking in young kids has led Babcock to create a four-person unit in Kadri, Leo Komarov, Morgan Rielly, and Nikita Zaitsev, that's tasked with facing an opponent's top line an absurd amount of time.

Tyler Dellow of The Athletic has developed a new measure of quality of competition, called Star Time, that attempts to capture how coaches deploy their lineups and match up to opponents, and Kadri has consistently ranked among the top in toughest quality of competition this year.

We can see how that unit has performed using the Puckalytics SuperWOWY tool developed by David Johnson, and unfortunately for the Leafs, that foursome with a rotating winger hasn't had great results, being outscored 19-11 at 5-vs-5, but they've also suffered from a brutal 96.8 PDO.

And yet, even while the unit is struggling, Kadri has been very strong. According to Puckalytics, Kadri leads all Leafs forwards in Corsi relative to teammates at +4 percent, but possibly even more impressive than his possession impact is how much he dominates his line's offence.

The Maple Leafs have the second-highest expected goals for per 60 minutes at 5-vs-5 in the NHL at 2.83, according to Corsica Hockey, so overall Kadri's expected goals for isn't that impressive until you account for the extreme line matching he's subject to, and the fact that he doesn't get much help from his linemates.

Most impressively, look at how little offence happens while he's on the ice that he isn't getting points on. Overall, Kadri has registered a point on 81.8 percent of all Leafs goals while he's on the ice at 5-vs-5, second only to Matthews on the Leafs. That can be interpreted as a little lucky as well, but you can see from the graph how much his personal production drives overall scoring. If his play dips, his line doesn't score.

Kadri still drives that offense mostly by shooting. Matthews is the only Leaf who shoots more often overall, and only he and van Riemsdyk get more scoring chances, but Kadri also creates scoring chances for his teammates at an extremely high rate. He's bested only by Matthews and Nylander, and he does it while playing with Komarov—who has produced offence at about a fourth-line rate this year—and a rotating cast of wingers he hasn't had a chance to get used to.

The only real criticism of Kadri's game this season has been that his once great penalty differential has turned on him. For years, Kadri was among the best in the NHL at drawing penalties while taking relatively few, adding up to drawing 58 more penalties than he took the last four seasons. This year, however, it seems like his reputation for drawing those calls has worked against him as he's in the negatives, having drawn 16 calls and taken 19 minors. But even while his penalty differential has no longer been a strength, Kadri has made up for it by having the best season of his career on the powerplay, ripping home 11 goals and 16 points.

I don't think we can call this a breakout year for Kadri because he was phenomenal in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, and has been consistently good since then. But for a coach like Mike Babcock to put that much trust in a player and get rewarded like this says a lot about who Kadri is as a player, and how at 26 years old he seems to be finding out who he is and where he fits in the NHL.