Long before Mark Stone became one of the best players in the NHL he was just another long-shot prospect taken by the Ottawa Senators in the sixth round (178th overall) of the 2010 NHL draft. Before Stone’s draft year began, he was slated to go in the top 50 by some draft experts, but a mix of his poor skating stride and injuries led to him plummeting in the draft. His production was fine, not great, posting 11 goals and 17 assists in 38 games for the Brandon Wheat Kings of the WHL.
Fast forward a decade and Stone is seen by many as one of the very best two-way forwards in the world. While his box car numbers are good, they wouldn’t lead you to think he’s one of the elite players in the game. When you start digging deeper under the surface, though, Stone pops off the page as an incredibly effective player in every aspect of the game.
The fact that he’s able to have the impact that he does at 5v5 while playing the wing just makes it that much more impressive. It’s something only a select few wingers can do; guys like Artemi Panarin, Taylor Hall and Andrei Svechnikov. The difference between Stone and those guys is that Stone is the perfect Swiss Army Knife. Need a penalty killed off? Put Stone on the ice. Need a goal at 5v5? Put Stone on the ice. Need a powerplay goal? Put Stone on the ice. Defensive zone draw with the opposing team’s best players out there? Dude, just put Stone on the ice. As a coach you can be blindfolded with noise cancelling headphones on and if you just tell Stone to get on the ice you’ve almost definitely made the right choice.
Although it seems mainstream hockey media types have come to realize that Stone is really good, it still feels as though he doesn’t get near enough love. At the mid-point of the ‘19/20 NHL season TSN did have Stone in their top 50 players, ranked 31st, one spot behind David Perron. TSN should cease to exist for publishing this kind of absolute insanity and all their money should be given to me. That being said, if you’re paying any attention at all you probably don’t put any weight into these lists as they’re always seemingly based almost exclusively on points and points alone. When you dig slightly under the surface, though, you’ll see that Stone leads the entire NHL in terms of on-ice goal differential relative to his teammates since he entered the league on a full-time basis during the 2014-15 season. Literally no player in the league has been better at driving goal differential since he showed up, which seems good since the goal of the game is to outscore the other guys. He’s constantly dictating play in so many different ways and below I’ll attempt to explore the details of his game that make him so effective.
Stone isn’t the flashiest player and he isn’t exactly Connor McDavid in terms of his skating ability, but he’s one of the smartest players in the game and it’s not just with the puck on his stick. Stone leads the lead in takeaways at 5v5 and in all-situations since 2015 despite missing over 60 games to injury during that span.
He’s also managed this while maintaining a career +31 penalty differential. He’s mastered the skill to the point where he somehow doesn’t even need a stick to take pucks from guys anymore. This doubles as a zone exit and the Knights nearly scored seconds later.
The YouTube video below is high art. Don’t call me a nerd.
Stone won’t often show up on your morning highlight show going coast to coast, but he constantly makes positive plays with and without the puck. When you do that on a consistent basis, these things start to show up in the scoring chance and goal differential department. That isn’t to say he’s not capable of scoring the occasional highlight reel goal, though.
Stone is the type of player the opposition needs to game plan around because there just aren’t really any players in the league who can keep the play in the offensive zone when they’re out there against him. If you get matched up against Stone’s line it’s going to be a bad night for you. If you miss a scoring chance you might as well go home now because you’re not likely getting another one and, if you do, he’s probably going to create two the other way. He always seems to know where the play is headed before anybody else does and, while he doesn’t lay huge hits, he’s an absolute bull on the puck. You can’t get it off of his stick and you can’t prevent him from taking it off of yours. If he’s not on top of the opposing puck carrier inevitably about to steal the puck, he’s in the passing lane about to get it back in that manner.
The above clip is a good example of a few of the ways Stone is able to ruin the opposition’s day. First he intercepts the breakout pass through the middle, then he makes a crafty little pass in traffic through the triangle between the now backtracking defender’s skates and his stick, followed by a forced turnover, keeping the puck in the offensive zone yet again. The next clip is the sequence immediately prior to this.
Chandler Stephenson gives Stone a great cross-ice feed and Stone creates chaos from there, trying twice to give William Karlsson an empty net. The first one is blocked on a nice defensive play by Duncan Keith, but Stone stays on the puck. He tries to chip one by Corey Crawford himself and when that doesn’t work he gets to the puck first behind the net and finds Karlsson with a point blank look at a near empty net, but he double pumps the shot. The puck finds its way back to Stone who tries to beat Crawford back to the other post, but Crawford makes the stop again. Stone is a puck magnet in the sense that he just always seems to be in the right place to collect loose pucks or any pass that’s attempted through his general vicinity. Most of it seems to be the way he anticipates the play, but his extremely good hand-eye coordination helps him with the execution upon getting to the spot where the puck is going to be.
One thing I’m not sure Stone gets enough credit for is his passing ability. He’s one of the very best playmakers in the world.
There are a lot of point shot setups here, but the defenceman he played the most often with at 5v5 was Shea Theodore who is both very good and one of the highest volume shooting defencemen in the league. He also sets up high danger chances at a rate more than double the league average, right in line with players like Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Johnny Gaudreau, Jack Eichel and William Nylander in that department. These are the type of plays that wind up in the back of the net at an extremely high rate relative to, say, passes to the point or shots without pre-shot movement. In the three clips below, watch how he’s able to make defenders back off of him, creating space for himself with his deception and change of speeds. Again, he’s not exactly going to burn by you, but he’s still able to use his feet to catch defenders off balance and then wait for the perfect moment to exploit that advantage he’s created for himself.
The play below is just another example of Stone anticipating the play before the puck ever gets to him. He sees the trailer Karlsson coming in unimpeded through the middle and as soon as the puck comes back to him he spins and feeds Karlsson alone in front, who makes a great play off of the outside of the skate and quickly roofs it on the backhand for the hat trick.
This last assist is another microcosm of what makes Stone so effective. That’s reigning Selke winner Ryan O’Reilly he picks off before setting up Karlsson for a shot from the slot, which creates the rebound chance that Pacioretty eventually deposits into the net. Stone must have seen O’Reilly glance over his shoulder before collecting the puck and attempting that pass, because as soon as he gets there Stone is stopping in his tracks in that passing lane.
After watching a bunch of Vegas games from last year over the last little bit I’ve come away absolutely blown away by Stone. I was already a big fan of his, but after ISOing in on him I’ve come away thinking he’s even better than I thought. If you find yourself bored in this hockey-less December, do yourself a favour and go watch this guy play. I learn something new about the game every time I do.