Most Underrated Players Early in 2023-24 NHL Season
The 2023-24 NHL season is officially underway, and some of the league's brightest stars are already making big impacts.
Toronto's Auston Matthews opened the season with hat tricks in back-to-back games.
Edmonton's Leon Draisaitl stormed out of the gate with seven points in his first three games.
Jack Hughes looks like he is going to continue his rapid rise to the top of the league's scoring leaderboard, while the Pittsburgh Penguins' veteran duo of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are showing they still have some magic in them.
As good as those players have been, not everything in the NHL is about the stars. There are a lot of players who sneak under the radar every year and make big contributions to impact their team's success, and that has been especially true over the first week of the NHL season.
So let's take a look at five players who have done exactly that so far and have a chance to make big impacts on their respective teams throughout the entire 2023-24 season.
Alexandar Georgiev, Colorado Avalanche
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When you think of the Colorado Avalanche, goaltending is probably not the first position that comes to mind. They won a Stanley Cup with Darcy Kuemper and have a roster that is centered around a couple of superstar forwards (Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen) and arguably the best defense in the entire league.
Now they have a pretty good goalie to go along with all of that.
Alexandar Georgiev had a sneaky good season a year ago in his first full year as a starter, posting a .918 save percentage and (very quietly) a league-leading 40 wins.
So far this season he has looked even better and been one of the biggest reasons the Avalanche won each of their first three games. In those three starts he has posted a .958 save percentage, allowing just four goals on 95 shots. That includes two games where he stopped 34 or more shots, including a game-stealing performance against the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday night where the Avalanche were outplayed for much of the evening.
Ideally, the Avalanche will not need to rely on him that much on most nights, and given the makeup of their roster and the way they have played for the past five years, they are not going to need him to steal many games. But it has to be reassuring to know that in the event they do need their goalie to come through, they have one who looks capable of doing so.
Reilly Smith, Pittsburgh Penguins
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The Pittsburgh Penguins acquired Reilly Smith from the Vegas Golden Knights over the summer in the first major move of the Kyle Dubas era. At the time, it looked like a perfect fit as a replacement for the departing Jason Zucker.
Smith's 2022-23 production was nearly identical to Zucker's, they play a similar style of hockey and they had nearly matching salary-cap numbers at roughly $5 million.
On the ice, the fit looks to be even better than the Penguins could have hoped.
Smith has been playing on their second line alongside Evgeni Malkin and Rickard Rakell, and they have excelled. Through the first three games of the season that trio played more than 30 minutes of five-on-five ice-time together and not only held a commanding territorial edge in terms of shot attempts and scoring chance, but they also outscored their opponents by a 4-0 margin.
Smith himself scored two of those goals and was constantly at the center of the offense.
The Penguins are an extremely top-heavy team offensively and are going to need to rely on their top two lines and No. 1 power-play unit to not only stay healthy but also post big numbers and contribute the bulk of the offense. So far, they have. And so far, Smith seems like a perfect addition into that mix even if he might be the most overlooked part of that top-six group.
Teuvo Teravainen, Carolina Hurricanes
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Teuvo Teravainen has been one of the NHL's most underrated players for the bulk of his time with the Carolina Hurricanes, and it might be even more true this season.
His 2022-23 campaign was limited to 68 games, while he also saw a small drop in his production to only 12 goals and 37 total points. On a per-game basis, it was one of the worst offensive seasons he has had since joining the Hurricanes and becoming a key contributor.
But that shouldn't cause you to give up on him as a key player for the Hurricanes and one of the most underrated in the league.
Even with last year's injuries and drop in production, he remains one of the NHL's elite possession drivers and a sneaky good defensive forward who is a perfect fit for Carolina's style of play.
All of those elements are still happening for him through the first part of this season, while the offense is also starting to make a comeback. He has recorded at least one point in each of Carolina's first four games through Thursday, including four goals. He is already a third of the way to his entire 2022-23 total.
Carolina is always a fascinating team because it does not really have a true superstar offensively. There is not one guy who is going to stand out as a top-10 producer or an elite goal-scorer. But what they lack in star power, they make up for with an insanely deep roster that is full of really good players who leave their roster with no clear weaknesses. Teravainen is a big part of that and has consistently sneaked under the radar while doing so.
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Thatcher Demko, Vancouver Canucks
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A lot of things went wrong for the 2022-23 Vancouver Canucks, and at the top of that list was a down year from starting goalie Thatcher Demko.
He missed time due to injury, and when he was healthy, his performance simply did not match what he had done over the previous two years as the Canucks' starting goalie.
Nothing changes a team's fortunes like the performance of its netminder, and the Canucks found that out in a big way last year. That has made him kind of a forgotten man coming into this season outside Vancouver, but he is off to an incredible start through his first two games, stopping 61 out of 64 shots.
He helped shut down the Edmonton Oilers' high-powered offense in a season-opening win, and was singled out by head coach Rick Tocchet as the only player who played well in Tuesday's tough 2-0 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Obviously Demko is not going to maintain a .953 save percentage all season, but last year's performance was also not an accurate reflection of the player he is and can be.
Getting him back for a fully healthy campaign with an improved defense in front of him should give him an opportunity for a big bounce-back year.
If he does bounce back, that could make the Canucks an under-the-radar contender for a playoff spot in the Pacific Division and Western Conference.
Quinton Byfield, Los Angeles Kings
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Let's just call this a hunch and a hope.
Four years removed from being the No. 2 overall pick, it would be easy to write off Quinton Byfield as a pretty significant bust to this point in his career.
Entering play Thursday he has managed just nine goals and 34 total points in 101 regular-season games and has yet to take a step forward as a potential star or franchise player. When you pick a player in the top two of the draft, the bare minimum expectation you have is that you at least get a really good top-line player.
The best-case scenario is you get a superstar who becomes the cornerstone of your franchise for more than a decade.
So far, the Los Angeles Kings are still waiting for that to happen. But there are some encouraging signs that Byfield might be able to change the narrative around his career and become the player the Kings hoped he could be when they picked him.
Since the second half of last season, he has been getting a spot on the Kings' top line next to Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe, and it is a trio that has worked exceptionally well together. Since the start of last season, that trio has outscored teams 32-12 and been the Kings' most consistent line.
While that has not translated into individual goals or points for Byfield, he has still seemingly found a home there, and through the first few games this season has been far more assertive offensively.
His shot-attempt and shot-on-goal numbers have skyrocketed, while he also chipped in a goal. If he keeps getting opportunities next to Kopitar and keeps generating shots the way he has through the first three games, there is a strong chance that he has a breakthrough season and starts to play like the No. 2 pick he is.
Advanced statistics via Natural Stat Trick.
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