Alex Pietrangelo

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

80 games, 13 goals and 31 assists at 24:39 a night, plus-7, forty-two penalty minutes, 227 shots, three power-play goals and one short-handed. Fourth overall in 2008 by St Louis, fourteen seasons, 879 games, 517 points.

The Finesse Game

2.830 takeaways per 60 is the most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, against 2.008 hits per 60, which is the 36th-fewest.

That is the whole defenceman. Erik Karlsson is second at 2.659 and Adam Fox third at 2.510, and the company tells you what kind of number it is: this is a stick, not a body.

6.91 shots per 60 is the 12th-most of the 202, at 5.7 per cent, from a 50-foot median with seventy-one per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet and six per cent from inside twenty. A point shooter, and a heavy one — his shot is 97.6 mph, the 77th percentile.

1.01 even-strength points per 60 is the 60th percentile and thirty per cent of his points came on the power play, off 2:13 a night with the man advantage.

52.2 per cent of the expected goals is the 71st percentile and 54.0 per cent of the attempts the 85th.

His ice went 65-61 against an expectation of 71.17-65.16 — six short in front and four fewer against, which on eighty games is the club’s whole season in one ledger.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 215 pounds, and forty-two penalty minutes in eighty games.

4.99 blocks per 60 is the 73rd percentile and 2:27 a night short-handed the 77th, against 0.24 penalties drawn per 60 at the 22nd percentile and 0.49 taken at the 31st — a man who is rarely in a scrum at either end of it.

The Intangibles

Twenty-four minutes and thirty-nine seconds a night at 32, with 2:13 on the power play and 2:27 short-handed.

22.0 mph is the 50th percentile among the 192 tracked defencemen and 8.66 miles per 60 the 71st, against 0.5 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 12th. He covers ground without ever sprinting, which is what a 24-minute chair at 32 looks like when it works.

He is 32, fourth overall in 2008, with 517 points in 879 games and a career plus-104. The takeaway rate is a genuine league lead and it is the least fashionable number a defenceman can lead in. Eighty games at twenty-four and a half minutes is the second one. Vegas paid for a number one and got eighty games of one, in the season it needed those least.