Desharnais, Cole and Pacioretty: What Might We Expect From Them Next Season?

One of the lone bright points of the 2011-12 season for Habs fans was how the Pacioretty-Desharnais-Cole line performed. The trio played upwards of 70% of their 5 on 5 shifts together, collectively producing 84 goals, 66 at 5 on 5 play. As a line that averages to 28 goals a piece, 22 at even strength.

To compare this to the rest of the league I made a list of the lines that comprised their teams top even strength goal scorers and played about 45%+ of each player’s even strength their even strength shifts together. The even strength goals and total goals of each 3 man forward unit was put together under the name of the line’s top scorer. This method largely eliminated any players that played less than ~65 games last season and tended to only included those playing a full (70+ games) season. Games lost and different circumstances makes this useless as an absolute ranking but it should give a ballpark idea of where good primary scoring units clock in at.

	Even Strength	ES + Powerplay
Stamkos	85	109
Malkin	80	116
Pacioretty	66	84
E Kane	66	72
Eriksson	63	77
Spezza	61	85
Bergeron	61	76
Zetterberg	61	69
Sedin	59	72
Tavares	58	85
Kessel	58	80
Kovalchuk	57	74
Thornton	56	78
Perry	55	76
Giroux	54	84
Iginla	49	67
Fleischmann	49	58
Erat	47	58
Pomminville	46	70
Whitney	46	66
Kopitar	40	66

Finally there are the lagging seven, either stars having disappointing seasons (Kopitar) or lesser talented groups that are their teams top offensive group (Fisher, Weiss)The twenty lines fall into three continuous groups on even strength. Firstly, the two even strength superstar driven units with Malkin and Stamkos. They get around a goal per game (~82) on even strength. Next is the pack of twelve lines all around 60 goals scored. Basically 3 goals per 4 games. This is where a large portion of the league’s top forward talent resides and most of these 3 man units contain at least one recognizably star player (e.g. Zetterberg) or at least 2 obvious “1st line talents,” (Bergeron+Seguin, Riberio+Eriksson).