If you are into puck possession, then you should be into Copenhagen star Auston Matthews.

If you copy and paste the league’s stats into a spreadsheet, you can figure out each player’s possession ratio by subtracting their giveaways from their takeaways. Then, you can take that result and divide it by the number of minutes they play each game to get their Possession Rating (Poss).

Forwards, especially centers, seem to be much better at this part of the game and Matthews is the best by a good margin with his amazing 70 takeaways to just 26 giveaways. Next on the list is a guy with a much smaller sample size. While Matthews gets first-line minutes and special teams time too, Kjetil Martinsen plays just 6 minutes per game for Belfast but he has the next best Poss Rating with his 18 takeaways and 8 giveaways.

The complete list is posted at the end of this story, but here is your All-Possession Team, the best at every position:

• Center – Auston Matthews, Copenhagen – 1.91
• Left Wing – Dominic Kubalik, Edinburgh – 1.13
• Right Wing – Curtis Lazar, Copenhagen – 1.28
• Defense – Artur Cholach, Stockholm – 1.10
• Defense – Noah Dobson, Helsinki – 0.93

Some Questions

Is puck possession a team stat more than an individual one? Do the better teams have the best Poss Ratings? We don’t know the answers to either question, but the fact 19th-place Kosice has – by far – the best balance of puck possession players leads us to believe it might not be a required team talent if you want a winning team. Here are some more stats to help you decide for yourself:

And here is every player’s Poss Rating as of today: