This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Andrew Peeke
Columbus Blue Jackets Defense
Minus-41, and his ice went 44-91 at five-on-five — the worst goal differential in the National Hockey League by twelve.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 22 | 1 | 2 | 3 | +1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3 | 13:51 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ | 11 | 0 | 3 | 3 | -4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 17:09 |
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 82 | 2 | 13 | 15 | -14 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 2.8 | 21:29 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 80 | 6 | 7 | 13 | -41 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 90 | 6.7 | 21:15 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 195 | 9 | 25 | 34 | -58 | 90 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 190 | 4.7 | 20:17 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
6 goals and 7 assists in 80 games, minus-41 — the worst figure in the league; no skater who played twenty games finished lower — at 21:15 a night.
It is worse than the plus-minus. At five-on-five his ice went 44-91. Minus-47 is the worst on-ice goal differential in the National Hockey League and the second-worst is minus-35, so he is not merely last, he is a category on his own. Only Erik Karlsson’s ice conceded more, 96, and Karlsson’s ice scored 96 to go with them.
43.6 per cent of the expected goals over 1,428 minutes, the 13th percentile, against an expectation of 50.57-65.34. So the chances were bad and the goals were far worse: twenty-six goals worse at the defensive end than the chances predicted.
That last gap is Columbus’s goaltending, which graded minus-34.1 and finished 31st. A defenceman playing 21 minutes a night in front of an .876 collects the difference in his record.
The Finesse Game
90 shots at a median of 51 feet, 76 per cent from beyond forty and 3 per cent from inside twenty — the most extreme point-shooter’s distribution of any defenceman in this chapter.
And here the numbers turn: from beyond forty feet he took 62 shots and scored three, 4.84 per cent, against a league rate of 3.17 per cent for a defenceman. Inside forty, 21 shots and three goals. His shooting was not the problem last season, which is a sentence worth writing precisely because nothing else in this report supports it.
The shot measures 94.3 mph at the 74th percentile. Six goals in 80 games is what a defensive defenceman produces and nobody drafted him to do more.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 214. The top speed reads 21.0 mph, the 4th percentile among 574 skaters, with 0.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 10th.
He is one of the slowest defencemen in the league and he plays 21 minutes a night against other clubs’ best forwards. That combination is visible in the goal differential and it is the most straightforward explanation available for it.
2.85 miles a game at the 71st percentile. He covers ground; he simply cannot cover it quickly.
22 penalty minutes in 80 games is a low number and a change: he took 60 the year before in the same role.
The Intangibles
34th overall in 2016, out of Notre Dame, and a Columbus draft pick playing a top-pair role because there was nobody else.
That is the context the minus-41 needs. Zach Werenski played thirteen games — too few to appear in this edition at all — and Vladislav Gavrikov was traded in March. Peeke spent the season as the first-pair right side on the club with the 31st-ranked expected goals against in the league.
He is a third-pair defenceman who was asked to be something else for a full season, and the record of it will follow him for years.
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.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
40% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He covers ground; he simply cannot cover it quickly.”
“He is one of the slowest defencemen in the league and he plays 21 minutes a night against other clubs' best forwards.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,428 minutes
- Expected goals
- 43.6%
- 13th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.8%
- 11th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 91 against. Expected: 50.6 and 65.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 45 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, 2022-23 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 29th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.28 a game
- Distance
- 2.85 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.3 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1428 minutes at five-on-five
- Gavin Bayreutheroff the roster17%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.6% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,428 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johnny Gaudreau | 44.9% | 43.0% | 49.3% |
| Boone Jenner | 47.0% | 42.4% | 48.4% |
| Vladislav Gavrikov | 41.5% | 44.4% | 51.8% |
44.9% together, 43.0% for him apart and 49.3% for Gaudreau apart. Gaudreau was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
119 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.