What does the NHL's new puck- and player-tracking data reveal about the Golden Knights, Avalanche, Bruins, Lightning and Penguins? Carol Schram found some intriguing stats.

Over the last couple of years, hockey fans have seen morsels of the data produced by the NHL's new puck- and player-tracking system in the rink and on TV.

On Monday, they were given the opportunity to start doing their own deep dives into the numbers with the launch of the NHL EDGE public website. 

The home page offers video tutorials that will help bring users up to speed on what data is available and how to interpret it. 

There are numbers for both teams and individual players, updated nightly after games conclude.

Let's start by investigating the data for the league's three unbeaten teams and a couple of other intriguing cases.

Vegas Golden Knights (6-0-0)

No Stanley Cup hangover here. The Golden Knights are the first champion ever to win their first six games after hoisting the Stanley Cup. They've got a tidy plus-14 goal differential and a PDO of 104.5 at 5-on-5, according to naturalstattrick.com, suggesting they've also been a little bit lucky. 

As most of us know — in Vegas, you can't win without a little luck.

On the Vegas team page in NHL EDGE, the champs rank in the 70th percentile or better in all measured categories. They're good at everything — at least in the top third of the league. 

They also ranked highly in goals scored (24, 93rd percentile) and skating distance (271.99 miles, 90th percentile). Being one of a handful of teams that have already played six games helps there, with the still-small sample size of data.

What's more interesting is the Golden Knights' team shooting percentage of 13.1 percent, which is in the 87th percentile and well above the league average of 9.9 percent. That's part of the reason for their boosted PDO, and there's always a concern that shooting percentage will regress toward the average. 

Last year, Vegas shot at a more usual 10.3 percent.

Boston Bruins (5-0-0)

By contrast, the Boston Bruins have picked up 10 of a possible 10 points this season despite scoring in the bottom half of the pack in almost every NHL EDGE team category.

The Bruins have won four of their five games to date by multiple goals, and their PDO is nearly identical to the Golden Knights' at 104.6. Yet Boston's best number is its shooting percentage of 10.6 percent, which puts the team in the 65th percentile. 

The Bruins' 16 goals put them in the 49th percentile, and they rank "below 50th" percentile in every other category, which is as specific as the league wants to get in the lower half of the rankings.

These data points have moved from last season. Then, the Bruins' skating numbers weren't great, but they did look strong in shot data and sat in the 81st percentile in the amount of time they spent in the offensive zone. 

While it seems like all is in excellent order in Beantown as the Bruins aim to better their best-ever regular season from 2022-23, the data suggests that there could be stormy waters ahead. Something to watch...

Colorado Avalanche (5-0-0)

The NHL EDGE profile for our third unbeaten team looks more positive but is still not as complete as the Golden Knights.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that a team that boasts Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar sits in the 99th percentile of speed bursts of over 20 mph. The league average is 109. MacKinnon leads all players with 50 by himself, and Makar adds another 11 — when the average for defensemen is two. 

At 56.84 percent, the Avs boast the best expected goals rate at 5-on-5 among the top teams — third overall behind the Los Angeles Kings (58.93 percent) and the Nashville Predators (58.64 percent). And Colorado has been a little unlucky according to its PDO, which sits at .995.

NHL EDGE gives the Avs high marks for offensive zone time, in the 87th percentile at 42.8 percent. And while the team's overall shooting percentage of 10.8 percent is solid, Colorado ranks in the bottom half of the league in top shot speed. Maybe 'how' matters more than 'how fast'?

Tampa Bay Lightning (2-2-2)

You know who shoots fast? The 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cup champions.

The Tampa Bay Lightning lead the NHL this season with 16 shots of at least 90 mph. Buffalo ranks second with 14, but it then drops off to four teams sharing third place, at 11. 

As we might expect from years of watching the hardest shot competition at the All-Star Game, defensemen dominate this category. The Lightning have two blueliners in the top 10: Victor Hedman (second, 101.36 mph) and Mikhail Sergachev (10th, 97.8 mph).

The Lightning's skaters move quickly, too — in the 93rd percentile with 160 speed bursts over 20 mph. Brayden Point ranks second to MacKinnon as an individual, with 39. 

Overall, the weakest data point on the Lightning's chart is their offensive zone time, just barely above league average at 40.7 percent. That aligns with their possession numbers from Natural Stat Trick, where they rank 28th with an expected goals share of just 43.2 percent. 

And luck has not been on their side — or, if you wanted to frame it another way, the goaltending has indeed been a problem. Tampa Bay's PDO of .973 suggests that better days should lie ahead, but the team's shooting percentage of 11.4 is just fine — very good, in fact. 

The issue is the 28th-ranked team save percentage of .8977, dragging the Lightning down. 

Watch for Jon Cooper's crew to see their luck improve right around the same time Andrei Vasilevskiy gets back between the pipes.

Pittsburgh Penguins (2-3-0)

Kyle Dubas is a noted numbers guy. And while he has only been at the helm of the Pittsburgh Penguins for five months, it's interesting to see how his vision translates within the NHL EDGE data.

The Penguins are another team leaning toward the realm of 'slow,' below the 50th percentile in top skating speed and top shot speed — even with Erik Karlsson showing very well in both those categories. With one goal so far, Karlsson's 7.1 shooting percentage is also above his career average of 6.9 percent but barely half of the incredible 12 percent he shot last season on his way to his 25 goals and 101 points.

As a team, the Penguins' accuracy of 9.4 percent puts them in the bottom half of the league — tied for 16th with Columbus, if you want to peruse the NHL's original complete-data stats page.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust currently account for 11 of Pittsburgh's 16 goals scored this season. They could really use some help.

One area where the Penguins do excel is offensive zone time. At 42.7 percent, they're in the 84th percentile. That's backed up by an expected goals rate of 55.63 percent at Natural Stat Trick, which ranks them fifth in the league at 5-on-5. 

The Pens' PDO is a near-neutral .993. So it's not like they've been unlucky, exactly. But there are some signs within these numbers that Pittsburgh is 'playing the right way,' as they say. Better days could lie ahead.