It’s not often that you hear much praise for recency bias, but I’ll make the argument that coming into the trade deadline it might be one of those times you lean into it a little. After all, would you rather bring in someone who is riding a heater or someone who has significantly seen the performance fall off, and then you are crossing your fingers that they’ll come back around at the right time? I think the correct answer is you want someone who has been consistent and performing at a rate they can sustain, but alas Erik Karlsson is expensive and there is only one Timo Meier out there.
Really the hope with this exercise is less about panicking about those who have fallen off, and more about identifying players who are in the process of getting back on track to where they should be. I’d share the data table and then share a few players that stood out to me when looking at which trade targets have performed the best since January 1st.

So first of all, so explainers on the data. The data from the left up to P/60 is all situation data, after that looking at the On Ice numbers for CF, GF, and xG are all looking at 5v5. The numbers highlighted in blue are the top ten players on the list in that category.
The first thing that stands out to me are two players who are certainly finding their game of late. Brock Boeser might not be scoring goals at the rate you’d hope to see from him yet, but he is picking up points, and his 15 points in 18 games certainly illustrate that he can be a lower cost to acquire addition to the top s …

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Author: Jon Steitzer / The Leafs Nation