🏒 Already a Canadian hockey legend, Sidney Crosby has earned his shot at another gold medal
My Week in Sport(s) 🏒 🏉 🏏 🏀 🏈
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: 🏒 Sidney Crosby, 🏉 Jorja Miller, 🏏 Caoimhe Bray, 🏀 Victor Wembanyama and 🏈 Drake Maye.
🏒 Already a Canadian hockey legend, Sidney Crosby has earned his shot at another gold medal
Connor Bedard — who featured in last week’s newsletter — is one of several young Canadian hockey players putting themselves in the mix for a trip to the 2026 Winter Olympics. If any of them make it, however, it won’t be at Sidney Crosby’s expense.
If you’re not aware of Crosby’s longevity, consider that he captained Team Canada at the 2014 Olympics — and at the Four Nations Face-Off earlier in 2025. If you don’t have a sense of how consistent a force the 38-year-old centre has been at the top level of the sport, let Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic help you. He has estimated the on-ice impact of every player in every NHL season since 2007-08 — and, over the summer, made his historical data publicly available to other analysts.
By Luszczyszyn’s ‘net rating’ — which measures a player’s impact on their team’s goal difference using a mix of traditional and advanced statistics — Crosby is unmatched. Over this period, the Pittsburgh Penguins veteran has provided around 319 goals of value above the average NHL skater in aggregate — 64 more than the next-best player. Adjust his output for the number of games he has played, and his record still stands up: only two players have a higher ‘per-82’ average than Crosby does.
One of those two is Connor McDavid; like Crosby, he has already been officially named to the Olympic team. The 28-year-old McDavid has had peaks that a younger Crosby wasn’t able to match. (In the available record, at least; the necessary data isn’t available to estimate his net impact during his first two seasons in the NHL.) But even during 2024-25 — one of the three weakest seasons of his career — Crosby remained one of the top 25 skaters in the NHL by net rating.
Per Luszczyszyn, he was Canada’s most impactful player at the Four Nations, too. It will be nearly impossible for Crosby to have a more iconic moment at this Olympics than his ‘Golden Goal’ on home ice back in 2010; if it meant leaving Turin with another gold medal, he’d likely be content to cede the ice to McDavid. (Or, indeed, Bedard.) Regardless, it’s remarkable that — after playing for 21 NHL seasons and in more than 1,500 professional games — Crosby will even be there, let alone on merit.
🏉 Sevens star Jorja Miller was as explosive an attacker as advertised at the Rugby World Cup
New Zealand didn’t make this year’s Rugby World Cup final, but Jorja Miller — on secondment from the nation’s world-beating international rugby sevens program — certainly lived up to the hype in the 15-a-side game.
She was particularly effective with ball in hand: playing as an undersized back-row forward, the 21-year-old made opposing tacklers miss more frequently than the world’s most dangerous outside backs. According to data published by Opta during the tournament, Miller beat a defender once every 1.2 carries she made — a better rate than stars like Ellie Kildunne, Portia Woodman-Wickliffe and Asia Hogan-Rochester. (She was also a particularly effective offloader of the ball in contact.)
For now, Miller has gone back to the seven-a-side game; the 2025-26 edition of the code’s world tour kicks off in Dubai next weekend. She should be back in action for the Black Ferns next year, though. A change to New Zealand Rugby’s annual calendar opens up the possibility of their top talent playing regularly in each format. If anyone can excel at both, it’s Miller: after winning World Rugby’s ‘Player of the Year’ award for sevens in May this year, she was named in their 15-a-side ‘Dream Team’ in October.
What else I learned last week
🏏 Teen all-rounder Caoimhe Bray is already contributing as a bowler
Australian cricket prodigy Caoimhe Bray burst onto the scene during last year’s WBBL with a batting cameo. Only three games into her second season, the 16-year-old all-rounder took a hat trick for the Sydney Sixers with the ball, too.
It’s the second discipline that has been far more prominent so far, though. Despite her fast start, Bray has faced only 3.1 balls per game as a batter in her first two seasons. (At the same age, Phoebe Litchfield was facing 17.5 per game.) However, she has already delivered more balls than any other 16-year-old fast bowler in WBBL history. Bray is a valued part of the Sixers’ attack, too: she has bowled 70% of her available allocation over this period — the third-highest usage rate of any bowler on her team.
🏀 Victor Wembanyama’s midrange shooting has dropped off this year
After looking at Luka Dončić in this section last week, we can perform a similar exercise with Victor Wembanyama. Before the Frenchman suffered a calf injury, his San Antonio Spurs had begun the season like one of the NBA’s most improved teams.
Despite an abrupt shift in his shot profile — the average distance of his field-goal attempts was 17.0ft last year, but just 12.4ft this year — Wembanyama has actually been less efficient from the field so far in 2025-26. (His effective FG percentage is 54.8%, down from 55.9%.) While he’s been a slightly better finisher at the rim in his third season, his shooting from the short midrange has deteriorated: he’s taking 18% of his attempts from between three and 10 feet, but converting only 36% of them.
🏈 Drake Maye is one of the few NFL QBs bringing back the deep ball
Has the deep passing game returned to the NFL this season? Really, it depends who you’re watching. Through Week 11, the average pass attempt was travelling 7.7 yards through the air to its intended recipient — an increase of 2% from last year.
A number of QBs are much more focused on throwing downfield, though. One of them is Patrick Mahomes; another is Drake Maye, a second-year starter for the New England Patriots. Advanced metrics rate Maye’s play highly; as
has highlighted in his work at Unexpected Points, a major factor in this is the value he adds on deep passes. So far this season, each attempt of Maye’s is travelling 8.9 yards in the air — one of the highest marks in the league, and up 23% from last year.This is the final edition of My Week in Sport(s) for 2025.
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