Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

23

Adam Fox

New York Rangers Defense

Five foot eleven, 255 career assists in 357 games, and a career plus-108.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20NYR7083442+22321041256.418:54
2020-21NYR5554247+19142111024.924:42
2021-22NYR78116374+18260121587.023:54
2022-23NYR82126072+28341051597.524:23
2023-24NYR72175673+213661513712.423:27
2024-25 so far
Career35753255308+108142103176817.823:04

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

72 games, 17 goals and 56 assists for 73 points, 6 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 36 penalty minutes, 23:27 a night and plus-21. He took 54.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,252 minutes, the 85th percentile, and his ice went 56-38 against an expectation of 56.83-47.28.

Level with the chances at one end and nine fewer conceded than they called for at the other. Seventy-three points in seventy-two games from the blue line, and the plus-21 was the best of any defenceman on the club.

The Finesse Game

192 attempts at a median of 42 feet, with 14 per cent from inside twenty and 52 per cent from beyond forty, 137 on goal, converted at 12.4 per cent against a career 7.78.

255 career assists in 357 games. Fourteen per cent of a defenceman’s attempts from inside twenty feet is very aggressive and it is deliberate — he walks off the line into the slot rather than shooting from the point. Seventeen goals is a career high by five.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 185 and does not defend with contact at all.

142 career penalty minutes in 357 games at twenty-three a night is a very low rate. He defends with an early gap and a stick, does not clear a crease, and kills penalties with 3 career shorthanded goals.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2016 by Calgary, out of Jericho, New York, three years at Harvard, five seasons, and 308 points in 357 games at a career plus-108. He has a Norris Trophy.

He is 26 and 185 pounds. A third-round pick who never played for the club that drafted him and has become one of the three or four best defencemen in the league is a scouting story worth the whole chapter.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,252 minutes

Expected goals
54.6%
85th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.7%
83rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 56 for, 38 against. Expected: 56.8 and 47.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
93rd
Numbers
85th

The two rank him within 8 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1252 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club
NYR took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.6% — 4.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,252 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Ryan Lindgren49.7%65.8%42.4%
Artemi Panarin63.4%47.8%53.3%
Vincent Trocheck58.2%52.0%53.0%

49.7% together, 65.8% for him apart and 42.4% for Lindgren apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Lindgren behind.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

192 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 52% from beyond forty.