Zach Hyman is making Team Canada look silly for excluding him from 4 Nations Face-off roster
It’s been 15 days since rosters were announced for the 4 Nations Face-off, the first international tournament to feature NHL players in far too long.
And while the Edmonton Oilers got some representation in the Team Canada roster with Connor McDavid, and the Swedish roster with Mattias Ekholm and Viktor Arvidsson, there was one player who was far and away one of the most egregious snubs of any team: Zach Hyman.
A slow start to the season was likely the reason he was left off given that he was injured, out of the lineup, and had scored just three goals and eight points in 20 games prior to the roster announcements. There was some clear recency bias in his exclusion, consider Hyman had racked up 117 goals and 214 points in 235 regular season games with the Oilers over the three prior seasons, and another 30 goals and 49 points in 53 playoff games.
Hyman would return from injury the day after the announcement as the Oilers hosted the Columbus Blue Jackets, going out and scored a pair of goals. And since then, all he’s continued to do is rack them up.
In seven games since the announcement, he’s scored a league-leading eight goals, adding in a trio of assists for 11 points, tied for seventh in scoring over that time. He’s getting more than a fair share of puck luck after getting none earlier this year.
Prior to injury, his three goals came on 9.14 expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick, but since his return, his eight have come on 3.44 expected. It’s all about balance, and now on the season he has accumulated 11 goals on 12.58, continuing to highlight how he’s one of the NHL’s most potent goal scorers.
That was the argument for why he was a great fit on the Team Canada roster. He’s well acquainted with Connor McDavid, who’s the likely captain for the team, given that of Hyman’s regular season goals McDavid has assists on 73, 62.3 percent of all goals in Edmonton, and an additional 17 playoff goals, 56.6 percent of his post-season tallies here.
Hyman’s ‘bring the lunch pail to work’ style of play on the ice has made space for McDavid to cook for years, and his willingness to go to the dirty areas had helped lead to so many of these goals. Couple that with his warrior mentality, as seen in the broken nose and shiners that won’t keep him from the Oilers lineup, and in a short-form tournament like what the 4 Nations Face-off will be, he was a surefire fit in the eyes of many — just not Team Canada’s brass.
There’s still a path for Hyman to make the roster ahead of the tournament, set for Feb. 12-20th in Montreal and Boston in lieu of an All-Star game, as Canada, the USA, Sweden and Finland can all add players in the event of injury.
Given Hyman’s offensive resurgence, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him as the first person called if that were to happen.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist, making up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at [email protected].
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