Stats you’ve never seen Part II
by Martin Merk|25 MAY 2018
Canadian defenceman Colton Parayko was the player with the hardest shot at the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.
photo: Andre Ringuette / HHOF-IIHF Images
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Last week after the end of the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship’s preliminary round we showed you statistics from the event you have never seen before. Time to have a look at the numbers after the end of the tournament, and some new ones!

Beside the usual hockey stats from goals to +/- and ice time that you can find in the STATS section or in the IIHF mobile app (Android, iPhone/iPad), the IIHF also used advanced technology to track the players and the pucks and find out more. You can read more about the methods here.

Who was the best passer? Who skated the fastest and the most? Who had the hardest shot? Who had the most puck possession? You’ll find out more in the following graphics!
Let's start again with passes. After the preliminary round, nobody had more completed passes than “Johnny Hockey” Gaudreau. The gap has now become a bit closer but Gaudreau remains number one while John Klingberg of world champion Sweden moved from third to second place.
Who is the best passer? While Johnny Gaudreau had the most completed passes, Russian defenceman Dinar Khafizullin was the player who had the biggest success rate with his passes. 74 per cent of his passes arrived where they should. Despite Russia losing its quarter-final game, Khafizullin overtook U.S. prospect Quinn Hughes, who was leading here after the preliminary round. Also Canada’s Ryan Pulock improved one place. And yes, you see right, there’s just defencemen in the top-10 (and also in the top-20).
We go from a discipline of defencemen to a discipline for forward. It never hurts to be fast as a forward and some had an incredible speed at their sprints. The fastest measured sprint was one of Latvian forward Ronalds Kenins, who had the top speed of 41.32 km/h (25.68 mph) during a sprint in the preliminary-round game against the United States. German forwards Leon Draisaitl and Frederik Tiffels, both in the game against Denmark, followed behind. The top-10 include players from eight different countries. The next one would be Korea’s Minho Cho, 11th with 38.51 km/h (23.93 mph). What some may notice: the top-10 haven’t changed after the preliminary round as nobody skated faster than 38 km/h in the playoff round.
So, Ronalds Kenins is the fastest skater. Time to go to another athletic discipline – the distance skated during the Worlds! After the preliminary round Oliver Ekman-Larsson was leading with almost a marathon distance in seven games. Three final-round games later this hasn’t changed. The Swedish defenceman remains first with 60.89 kilometres (37.84 miles) he skated in his ten games, closely followed by his teammate John Klingberg. It’s not a co-incidence that these two also got the most ice time among skaters at the Worlds, 245:49 for Ekman-Larsson and 240:06 for Klingberg. Another Swedish defenceman, Adam Larsson, follows in third place before the first forward, Team USA’s Dylan Larkin.
Now we go from the players to the puck! During all 64 games, the pucks travelled a distance of 952 kilometres on the ice sheets of Copenhagen and Herning. That’s roughly the distance from Copenhagen to London or Zurich! The puck travelled the biggest distance during the gold medal game, which went to overtime and thus took 80 minutes.
Let’s continue with the puck and look at puck possession. The Czech national team had most of it during their games at the Worlds, 56.67%, and took over from the United States who led after the preliminary round while the Koreans saw the puck the least, 40.47%.
And now we go to our puck radar. During the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship we also measured the puck speed. And here we have a clear winner: Canadian defenceman Colton Parayko appeared multiple times among the hardest shots. Five of the eight hardest shots were from him and his hardest was in the semi-final loss to Switzerland that reached 168.3 km/h (104.6 mph). The second-hardest shooter was German forward Matthias Plachta, who appeared with two shots in the top-10 of the hardest shots followed by four Nordic players, Jannik Hansen (Denmark), Teuvo Teravainen (Finland), Jesper Jensen (Denmark) and Mathis Olimb (Norway).