I’ll start with the conclusion: Jonathan Huberdeau is the most overrated point producer currently playing in the NHL.
But let’s start by saying a few nice things about the Calgary Flames winger.
For one thing, he may be the best 3v3 player we’ve ever seen.
As a Florida Panther, he and his linemates outscored opposition players by an outrageous 6-to-1 ratio at 3v3. Some of that was driven by hot goaltending and finishing luck, but Huberdeau’s on-ice expected goals for was still over 70%, best in the NHL over a three-year span.
Huberdeau has everything to be a dominant player at 3v3. He is fast, strong, incredibly dextrous and show a rare flair for feathering passes to teammates on quick counter-attacks.
Many of these traits carry over to his 5v5 play, as well.
When Huberdeau has space and a clear path toward the net, his skillset makes him one of the best. The .gif file above, exported at three frames per second, doesn’t come close to capturing how quick his hands are. One second he’s in traffic, the next the puck is in the net. That’s elite.
However, the type of game Huberdeau wants to play doesn’t match up all that well with 5v5 hockey. Especially the 5v5 hockey practiced by his current team.
This season, Huberdeau is still able to pass the puck into scoring areas at a high, if not elite, clip. However, everything else has gone down the toilet:
He’s not able to get shots off, whether off the rush or off the cycle
He’s not able to create time on the puck leading to controlled entries
His exit contribution remain average, indicating that he hasn’t made tactical tradeoffs to favor the build-up phase of play
What’s happening with Huberdeau inside Darryl Sutter’s defense-first system is what many (including myself) feared would happen last year with Johnny Gaudreau.
Because of how tightly Sutter wants his team to play, CGY skaters don’t have much space to work with on either side of the puck. Everything is a grind. No one gets easy speed off the rush to get to the net.
Gaudreau ended up having a great 2021-22 season regardless. Despite his lack of size, Gaudreau is actually one of the most difficult players to contain in small areas. If you looked up slippery in the dictionary, you’d find a headshot of Johnny Hockey.
Huberdeau is not that, at all.
When an opponent initiates contact with CGY10, he folds like a paper towel because his feet get stuck. As such, it’s difficult for him to win 1v1 battles along the boards or anytime he’s not able to get his (excellent) defensive stick involved. Unfortunately, these contested plays are dime-a-dozen in CGY’s system.
On any given night Huberdeau may come out on the wrong side of 10 or 20 of these physical encounters, which makes it difficult for anyone to execute with confidence in the rare moments he does have the puck on his stick.
Revisiting Huberdeau’s highlight-reel goal, we see that is it actually Nazem Kadri who drives at two defenders, shields the puck and creates the lane to the net. Sam Bennett, Anthony Duclair and Sasha Barkov did a lot of that for Huberdeau in Florida.
Gaudreau did similar things for Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm last season in Calgary.
Huberdeau’s game is just not very well set-up to be the creator of such plays. If he carries the puck into traffic, it may emerge from the pile in the form of a last-second slip pass, but he usually won’t.
So, back to our conclusion: Jonathan Huberdeau is the most overrated point producer currently playing in the NHL (he had 115 last season).
His highly specialized game shows a poor understanding of the fundamental structure of 5v5 play, where roughly 80% of puck touches happens outside the dot and are physically contested.