Liam Kirk could not be in better form as he departs the Peterborough Petes to join up with his Team GB U20 team-mates in Estonia, as they compete in World Championship Division II Group A (13th to 19th January 2019).

The 19 year old played in three World Championships for GB last year (U18, U20, Men’s) and much will be expected of Kirk (a strong candidate to wear a letter) despite the step up a division for this U20 group.

Since December, Kirk has produced at point per game pace in eleven outings (7-4-11), signing off with a pair of multi-point games for the Petes.
If you go back even farther, the Arizona prospects has 21 points in his last 23 games and is revelling now having made the required transition to succeed in Canadian junior hockey.

It’s time to look a little deeper into his production though, because statistics can often be padded by power play success and misleading when racking up a plethora of secondary assists without contributing much on the play leading directly to a goal.

Let’s break it down to it’s simplest form.

Seventeen of his 25 points have been accrued at 5v5 and that total consists of twelve goals, five primary assists and one secondary helper.

On the power play, Kirk has two goals, two primary assists and two of the secondary nature.

Just one secondary assist during overtime wraps up his offensive production of which twenty-one points are of the primary kind – that’s an impressive 84% for those counting at the back.

It’s Kirk’s goal production that has perhaps been the most noteworthy apart of his game of late.
He’s tied for third place on Peterborough with fourteen goals and 64th overall in the OHL – not bad for a rookie hailing from the UK.

The GB forward is responsible for 10.6% of Peterborough goals scored and owns a 13.46 shooting percentage – which is well above the team average 9.72%.

Kirk has been getting in the high percentage scoring areas on a regular occurrence and making good decisions on when to shoot, with only around 30% of his shots taken in the area between (above) the top of the circles and the blue line/point.

Goal Area Breakdown:

Slot: 4
Right Circle: 3
Left Circle: 2
Crease/Blue Paint: 1
Point: 1

As per Prospect Stats (an excellent resource) Kirk’s estimated TOI is 12.43 minutes per game which is around the average for Peterborough forwards, with Nick Robertson leading the way at an average of fourteen.

Last but not least here’s an interesting look at Liam Kirk’s effective on the Peterborough Petes by Evan Oppenheimer.

“Betweenness is a way to measure how much a player drives their and their team-mates’ scoring”
For those not aware of this before now, it’s a metric used in network analysis. In this case, it’s a function of with whom a player scores and primary assists.

The Even Strength graph certainly tells it’s own story for Liam Kirk.

Many thanks to Evan for allowing me to use his data in this article and if you have any questions I‘m sure he would be happy to answer. You can find Evan on Twitter @OppenheimerEvan