I’m going to show two graphics that summarize Tomas Hertl the best.

I know Tomas Hertl being an unlucky player is a view that I’ve shared multiple times in this space, but c’mon, he can’t be that snakebitten, right?

Oh.

I honestly think that Tomas Hertl is one of the unluckiest players in the history of the National Hockey League. Let’s take a look, shall we:

2014: Bursts onto the scene with a four-goal night in just his third career NHL game, including this cherry on top. Has 25 points in 35 games and was well in Calder Trophy conversation. Season pretty much ends on December 19th, when Dustin Brown, accidentally or not, collides with Hertl, injuring Hertl’s knee in the process. Hertl wouldn’t return to the lineup until the last two games of the regular season. Does not win the Calder.

2014-15: Clearly still trying to recover from his knee injury the previous season. Much like the rest of the team that year, Hertl has his worst year as a pro, scores only 31 points in 82 games.

2015-16: New coach Peter DeBoer experiments with Hertl as a center after Logan Couture goes down with an injury early in the season. While the advanced stats call the experiment a relative success, lack of production on the scoreboard says otherwise. Hertl then gets moved to the first line alongside a resurgent Joe Thornton and red-hot Joe Pavelski. Hertl catches fire, scoring 31 points over the last 46 games of the season and turns the Thornton line into one of the best in the league. Hertl is a solid player for the Sharks in the postseason, scoring 11 points in 20 games as the Sharks advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in franchise history. Fun must be always. In Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals, Hertl re-injures his knee and is out for the rest of the series. Sharks lose in six games. Turns out fun sometimes isn’t always.

2016-17: You thought Hertl was done with the whole injured thing? You thought wrong. Try losing 32 games to injury with the same knee. At least he was productive when he was in the lineup with 22 points in 49 games? On the plus side, he had the game of his life playing center matching up against Connor McDavid in the playoffs.

2017-18: No knee injuries, fortunately, but he is quite possibly the unluckiest player in the league this season. Still, it’s hard to be mad at someone who scores 46 points in 79 games.

Luck and injury history aside, Tomas Hertl still had a solid 2017-18 campaign. His aforementioned 46 points tied a career-high, and he set a new career-high in goals with 22. Playing alongside Logan Couture, he played arguably the toughest minutes in his career and managed it quite well.

Advanced stats-wise, Hertl finished the regular season with a 51.34% CF%, +0.24 Rel CF%, 52.24 xGF%, and a .26 Rel xGF%. All of this despite playing the third-most difficult minutes out of forwards on the team who have played at least 800 minutes by ZSR and the second-highest CF% Quality of Competition. This isn’t surprising because he played the most with Logan Couture last season, who usually has more defensive minutes alongside the Vlasic-Braun pairing.

Hertl is a great example of players who stats guys love but don’t show up on the scoreboard. He’s a pretty good possession player and makes plays happen in the offensive zone. He’s one of the few big, physical guys the Sharks have and is perfectly comfortable with parking himself in front of the net for a deflection, quick play behind the net, and/or a juicy rebound.

But for some inexplicable reason, Hertl has had a difficult time finishing against NHL-level goaltenders. Since his thrilling rookie campaign, where he shot 15.6%, his shooting percentages the next three seasons were 9.0%, 10.4%, and 10%. It saw an increase last season to 12.6%, but you still get the feeling that he’s capable of much more.

I would argue that some of it is due to the amount of development time he has missed because of his various injuries. Before last season, he had only played 75.6% of games the Sharks have played since 2013-14, the year he debuted with the Sharks. It might be a bit odd to say that a player from the 2012 draft might still have some more developing to do, but in Hertl’s case, it might make sense.

Yet, the biggest reason why Hertl has ended up as one of the most snakebitten players in the league is because of his inability to finish on the power play. It’s still a problem at 5v5 (he’s fourth on the team in ixGF with 15.77, yet he only scored nine times), but it is magnified on the power play. His ixGF on the power play is 11.52, by far the best on the Sharks (Joe Pavelski is in second with 8.91.) and ninth in the entire league. He scored just five goals on the power play last season. Here are his shot locations on the power play, courtesy of Micah Blake McCurdy at hockeyviz.com:

That’s what makes Hertl so fascinating yet so frustrating to watch. He’s great at putting himself in dangerous areas at the right time and creating something in front of the net. It just doesn’t work out for him most of the time. An increase in power play points would mark a significant improvement in the Czech forward’s game.

2018-19 Outlook

This offseason, the Sharks re-signed Hertl to a four-year, $5.65 million AAV contract, which is very club-friendly considering that Hertl’s game should only continue to improve.

For the 2018-19 season, it’s likely that Hertl returns to the Couture line, where he played for much of the year last season. It’s clear that coach Peter DeBoer is comfortable with playing Couture and Hertl with more defensive minutes in order to shelter aging veterans Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski more.

But if we’re being honest, it really doesn’t matter where Hertl plays or who he plays with, as this year-old Fear the Fin article points out. Hertl will be a positive contributor no matter where he plays in the lineup. When Thornton retires, it’s possible that the Sharks could move Hertl back to center (or if Thornton gets hurt again). Still, until that day comes, expect Hertl to be back on Couture’s wing for the near future.

There are two sticking points with Hertl for the long-term future: can he improve his scoring touch (especially on the power play), and can he stay healthy?

Health is something I can’t answer. Obviously, the fact that he was able to stay healthy last season is proof that he can stay healthy over the course of the season. Still, he needs to prove that he can stay healthy over the course of multiple seasons. One more accidental collision and we’re talking about a fourth knee injury in six seasons.

As for the scoring ability, it’s pretty easy to bet on it getting better for Hertl. Will he suddenly churn out multiple 35+ goal seasons? No, but if he can stay healthy, he might end up with somewhere between 25 and 30. I think that the jump from 10% to 12.6% is the result of a young player figuring out how to score consistently at the NHL level. It’s awfully hard to bet on Hertl underperforming his shot selection that badly again next season. He won’t have a William Karlsson-esque jump, but his scoring should see an improvement.

If I were to take a stab at it, a 50-point season seems fairly realistic for the 2012 first-round pick. His career post-knee injuries says otherwise, but this might be the year that Hertl finally has some bounces go his way. Remember he was only four points away from that last season. Something along the lines of 25/25/50 is what I would put down for Hertl.

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