This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →

Alex Goligoski

A plus-41 at 37 — tied third among all defencemen — and the fewest takeaways of the 202 who qualify.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2007-08	PIT	3	0	2	2	+2	2	0	0	0	2	0.0	13:56
2008-09	PIT	45	6	14	20	+5	16	4	0	0	61	9.8	18:18
2009-10	PIT	69	8	29	37	+7	22	2	0	0	98	8.2	21:25
2010-11	PIT/DAL	83	14	32	46	+20	40	7	0	4	162	8.6	22:14
2011-12	DAL	71	9	21	30	0	16	2	0	1	140	6.4	22:46
2012-13	DAL	47	3	24	27	+4	18	0	0	0	80	3.8	22:23
2013-14	DAL	81	6	36	42	+9	28	3	0	0	141	4.3	24:19
2014-15	DAL	81	4	32	36	0	24	0	0	0	122	3.3	23:49
2015-16	DAL	82	5	32	37	+21	34	1	0	1	127	3.9	23:50
2016-17	ARI	82	6	30	36	-9	28	1	1	0	112	5.4	23:20
2017-18	ARI	78	12	23	35	-31	26	3	0	3	119	10.1	23:17
2018-19	ARI	76	3	24	27	-7	16	1	0	0	102	2.9	20:49
2019-20	ARI	70	4	28	32	+8	24	2	0	0	101	4.0	23:03
2020-21	ARI	56	3	19	22	+2	14	0	0	0	72	4.2	23:00
2021-22	MIN	72	2	28	30	+41	34	0	0	0	80	2.5	18:56
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	996	85	374	459	+72	342	26	1	9	1519	5.6	22:23

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

2 goals and 28 assists in seventy-two games at 18:56 a night — and a plus-41. That is tied for the sixth-largest plus-minus in the league and tied third among defencemen, behind Devon Toews and Cale Makar.

996 career games, eighth-most among the 223 defencemen in this book, at 37, from the 61st pick of 2004.

The Finesse Game

1.31 even-strength points per 60 is the 85th percentile on 3.52 shots per 60 at the 25th. Twenty-eight assists and two goals at 37, and 374 of his 459 career points are assists — he has built a 996-game career without ever needing to shoot to be useful. He moves it and he does not shoot it — 2.5 per cent on eighty shots, from a 53-foot median.

0.26 takeaways per 60 is the fewest of all 202 qualified defencemen. Nothing in the event record credits him with removing a puck from anybody, which sits beside 1.36 giveaways at the 27th percentile.

54.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 84th percentile. And then the goal record: his ice went 80-40 against an expectation of 49.42-41.23. Thirty-one goals above what the model asked for going forward, and one against below it.

A plus-41 built on that gap is the most finishing-dependent number in this chapter, and Minnesota led the league in finishing at plus-49.1. Roughly two-thirds of that surplus happened on his ice.

The pairing was good on its own terms: 57.1 per cent with Jared Spurgeon across 948 attempts, against 52.5 for Goligoski alone. But he read 49.8 per cent with Ryan Hartman over 614 attempts while Hartman read 57.2 apart from him.

The Physical Game

2.47 hits per 60 is the 25th percentile and 4.23 blocks the 54th, at 5-11 and 173 pounds in his fifteenth season. Thirty-four penalty minutes.

There is no physical dimension to report and there has not needed to be for a decade.

The Intangibles

21.4 mph is the 21st percentile and 89.1 mph of shot speed the 11th — slow, and among the softest shots at his position — against 8.57 miles per 60 at the 61st. He is still covering ordinary ground at 37, which is the part that has not gone.

The plus-41 will not repeat and the assists probably will. Reading him as a 30-point third-pair defenceman who moves the puck is the version supported by everything except the goal column, and the goal column is the one that will not come back.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“Twenty-eight assists and two goals at 37, and 374 of his 459 career points are assists — he has built a 996-game career without ever needing to shoot to be useful.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,153 minutes

Expected goals: 54.5%; 84th pct
Shot attempts: 52.8%; 77th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 80 for, 40 against. Expected: 49.4 and 41.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

26th

Numbers

84th

The numbers rank him 58 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 55 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 72 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 42nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.43 a game
Distance: 2.70 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.1 mph; 31st pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2021-22 · 1153 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, 2021-22

The club: MIN took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.5% — 0.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,153 minutes at five-on-five — 81st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jared Spurgeon	57.1%	52.5%	55.9%
Kevin Fiala	57.2%	53.3%	55.7%
Ryan Hartman	49.8%	56.6%	57.2%

57.1% together, 52.5% for him apart and 55.9% for Spurgeon apart. He was worse away from Spurgeon, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Spurgeon did.

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

107 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 66 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.