Theory: Alexander Wennberg has been replaced with an imposter, Face/Off style.
I may only be armed with things like “circumstantial evidence” and “an affinity for terrible Nic Cage movies,” but someone has to connect the dots.
Let’s start with the most compelling point of evidence: Wennberg’s shooting rates. Remember when John Tortorella did this?
#CBJ John Tortorella just blew practice dead during power play drill, put four pucks down and made pass-happy Alexander Wennberg shoot them.
— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) March 15, 2016
The following season – last season – Wennberg put up 186 shot attempts over 80 games. Solid, sure, but still good for just 12th on the team, slightly behind Josh Anderson, who played 500 fewer minutes last season. This offseason, the Jackets added an elite sniper to Wennberg’s line in Artemi Panarin, and Cam Atkinson (update: Tortorella has split them up. Is he onto my conspiracy?), who led the team with 399 shot attempts last year, rounds out the trio. One would think they’d do most of the shooting, right?
Wake up, sheeple.
On the scoresheet, this play goes as an assist – the most Wennberg-ian stat in existence – but it didn’t come from a silky smooth pass. No, it came from a shot through traffic that just happened to bounce all the way out to Werenski, who hammered it home. Minutes earlier, Wennberg got a pass at the blueline, and instead of continuing the cycle and letting a play develop, he ripped a shot into traffic.
If life was a 1990’s sitcom (and dear god, why isn’t it?), one of his teammates would have turned to him and incredulously asked “who are you, and what have you done with Alexander Wennberg?”
(Also, instead of a Stanley Cup, they’d be playing hockey to win a cash prize that happens to be the exact value needed to save an after-school program, or something. And everyone would be wearing denim. But I digress.)
Through two games, Wennberg’s put up seven total shot attempts, with four of them going on goal. That pace, irresponsibly extrapolated to a full season, has Wennberg on pace for a 287 shot attempt season, which would be more than Nick Foligno had last year. In fact, he has more shot attempts so far this year than Artemi Panarin does.
Another piece of evidence: remember the start of camp, when Wennberg arrived late, due to “visa issues?” Was that because he’d just signed a new contract, or had he been taken hostage and had his face surgically swapped onto a more diabolical hockey player? Think about it – if you had the means to surgically replace your face with someone else’s, it’d be Wennberg’s, right?
The @BlueJacketsNHL will benefit from @Alex_Wennberg's skill for 6 more years! #NHLTonight pic.twitter.com/3NQzHdXOPX
— NHL Network (@NHLNetwork) September 6, 2017
So, is this a case of a player making a slight adjustment to his game, a stat skewed due to small sample size, or an international conspiracy? Reality would suggest one of the first two, but all I’m saying is, we can't rule out the conspiracy thing just yet.
