CHICAGO \u2014 Will Smith is a much better player than he was in his rookie year.<\/p>\n
The sophomore San Jose Sharks star is also just 21, so he has a ways to go before he hits his prime.<\/p>\n
Smith has 23 goals and 57 points in just 67 games, a big step from 17 goals and 45 points in 74 games last year.<\/p>\n
Smith\u2019s improvement hasn\u2019t just been simply on the scoresheet, either.<\/p>\n
Smith, Macklin Celebrini, Alex Wennberg, San Jose Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky, NHL scouts, and Stathletes micro-stats discuss how the 2023 No. 4 pick has improved.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore assertive offensively,\u201d Scout #1 said.<\/p>\n
Everyone can see that Smith is more confident with the puck than he was last season, and the micro-stats back it up.<\/p>\n
Zone Entries<\/p>\n
Smith is creating a lot more offense on a typical 5-on-5 zone entry now.<\/p>\n
According to Stathletes, he\u2019s an 89 percentile expected threat, among all NHL forwards, on a zone entry now, far more dangerous than last year\u2019s 65 percentile.<\/p>\n
Entries xThreat are \u201cexpected goals created (from passing or carrying) off of zone entry attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s something that he\u2019s worked on and understands when he has time to make a play and when he doesn\u2019t, and he\u2019s got real good feel for that,\u201d Warsofsky said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely intentional,\u201d the San Jose Sharks winger said. \u201cLast year was my first year playing wing, so you obviously don\u2019t get more puck touches coming through the middle, as you do as a center. So this year, I wanted to have more controlled entries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Will Smith is a much better player than he was in his rookie year. The sophomore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4216,93,1035,1036,88,90,89,98,44566,3578],"class_list":{"0":"post-269074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-alex-wennberg","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-macklin-celebrini","11":"tag-ryan-warsofsky","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news","15":"tag-san-jose-sharks","16":"tag-stathletes","17":"tag-will-smith"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}