It is unlikely that he would maintain a 11.5% on ice sh%. I shouldn't have to explain why. Look at his oish% by season, maybe you can spot the outlier:
6.39
7.99
8.19
11.49
He had 64 GF vs 47 xGF. A skilled player should typically have a higher GF vs xGF, but not by that proportion.
Zegras had 57 GF vs 52 xGF.
I basically gave you the explanation. St-Louis + Caufield popping off. He's at ~11-12% ever since St-Louis took over at 5v5. Before that he played with guys that had no finishing at all. Anderson, Armia, Drouin, etc. You name them. Toffoli was basically his teammate with good finishing and that was just for half of 20-21. His finishing was horrid before him getting traded in 21-22.
All of this came at the expense of his defensive game. As long as he plays with Caufield, unless something happens to Cole, the GF - xGF comparison is always going to be in the positive by a non negligible amount.
For the record, if we look at the 3 past years combined (to compare sustainability), his "(GF - xGF)/60" of last season (0.675) would rank 14th amongst forwards over the past 3 years combined. And there are guys like Schmaltz, Hartman, Kyrou, McCann, Thomas, Buchnevich, Wilson, Burakovsky, Schenn, Keller, etc. ahead or around that mark for the combined 3 years. This is hardly something that is only for superstars, and this happens far more frequently and sustainably than you'd think. (I'm using EH data without correction fyi - corrections wouldn't change anything much).
His career avg shooting percentage coming into this year was 11.2%. If he had shot his average, he'd have 18 goals last year instead of 26, which is a difference of 8 goals.
I did misread and miscalc there. But, regardless, if you want to look at sustainability you can't just take his SH% as a whole while forgetting context. His rookie season is, as of now, just as big of a outlier career wise as last season. When you compare career stats to one season's stat to assess sustainability, you generally have to include said season - especially for players that are progressing.
His excess of goals, as I stated, comes from the slot/crease where he had higher finishing than previous years. xGF does a bad job assessing the true dangers of shots in the crease.
If you want to break down by strength, to see what we can observe. FTR all I said up until this point was BEFORE I made this table, and I don't want to go change stuff :
| (Career incl. 22-23) | All | 5v5 | PP | 5v5+PP | Other (PK, OT3v3, 4v4, etc.) |
| Career - TOI | 5564.81 | 4136.03 | 808.83 | 4944.86 | 619.95 |
| Career - SH% | 12.58% | 9.77% | 21.01% | 12.36% | 14.10% |
| Career - Shots | 596 | 399 | 119 | 518 | 78 |
| Career - Shots/60 | 6.43 | 5.79 | 8.83 | 6.29 | 7.55 |
| Career - Goals | 75 | 39 | 25 | 64 | 11 |
| Career - Goals/60 | 0.81 | 0.57 | 1.85 | 0.78 | 1.06 |
| 2022-23 - TOI | 1729.83 | 1214.70 | 273.05 | 1487.75 | 242.08 |
| 2022-23 - SH% | 16.05% | 13.46% | 20.59% | 15.22% | 20.83% |
| 2022-23 - Shots | 162 | 104 | 34 | 138 | 24 |
| 2022-23 - Shots/60 | 5.62 | 5.14 | 7.47 | 5.57 | 5.95 |
| 2022-23 - Goals | 26 | 14 | 7 | 21 | 5 |
| 2022-23 - Goals/60 | 0.90 | 0.69 | 1.54 | 0.85 | 1.24 |
As we can see, the main changes in sh% occur at 5v5 and in other situations. I didn't look into the details for those because there are too many of them, but the quick notes are 1) Suzuki only started playing on the PK last season and 2) he's never scored an empty net goals. At a quick glance it seems I can find 2 PK goals, 1 4v4 and 1 goal with empty net. These other situations are too inconsistent to make any projection with.
His 5v5 sh% is higher than his career sh% by about ~4%, so about 4 goals based on the number of shots he took. And, I will actually bring your attention to said number of shots, notably his /60 rate. It's considerably lower than his career numbers - not as much as his sh% is higher though. This suggests something very obvious : Now that he has an elite finisher to play with, he may shoot a bit less because his better option is now a pass rather than a shot in certain situations. This may explain why his number of low-danger unblock shot attempt rate is quite lower if you look at MoneyPuck (6.32 per 60 before this season and 5.07 per 60 this season; 5.93 per 60 career wise).
Naturally, by taking a higher number of medium and high danger shots, his sh% will be higher. Is 13.46% at 5v5 a bit high? Sure, but that also barely ranks top 30 in the league last season. It's not a Nelson or Zacha case where they both shot above 16%, either.
In the end, saying that "if he shot his career average this season he would have scored X" as I suggested is a bit inaccurate because it seems he is taking less shots likely as a result of having played more with a confident, non-broken Cole. If his sh% was lower, it likely would have meant he would have shot more, thus mitigating a little. And, in the end, it's not like he scored 12399 more goals than his previous best.
So, yeah, my conclusion with all of this is you're putting way too much emphasis onto something that once regularized will likely be pretty much inconsequential. Thinking he'll scored ~20-30 goals with his talent and shot is nothing far fetched.
