This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ben Chiarot
Detroit Red Wings Defense
Minus-31 and the 9th percentile in expected-goal share, in the first year of a four-year contract.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | WPG | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 10:47 |
| 2014-15 | WPG | 40 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +5 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 5.4 | 17:01 |
| 2015-16 | WPG | 70 | 1 | 9 | 10 | -9 | 43 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 74 | 1.4 | 14:27 |
| 2016-17 | WPG | 59 | 2 | 10 | 12 | +2 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 4.1 | 15:19 |
| 2017-18 | WPG | 57 | 2 | 12 | 14 | +15 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 57 | 3.5 | 15:17 |
| 2018-19 | WPG | 78 | 5 | 15 | 20 | +6 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 111 | 4.5 | 18:37 |
| 2019-20 | MTL | 69 | 9 | 12 | 21 | +5 | 61 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 130 | 6.9 | 23:08 |
| 2020-21 | MTL | 41 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -16 | 50 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 1.2 | 21:47 |
| 2021-22 | MTL/FLA | 74 | 9 | 17 | 26 | -14 | 48 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 143 | 6.3 | 22:51 |
| 2022-23 | DET | 76 | 5 | 14 | 19 | -31 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 110 | 4.5 | 20:36 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 565 | 36 | 101 | 137 | -40 | 402 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 792 | 4.5 | 18:54 |
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
5 goals and 14 assists in 76 games, minus-31, 51 penalty minutes, 20:36 a night.
42.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,313 minutes, the 9th percentile — the worst of any Detroit defenceman — with his ice at 46-73 against an expectation of 43.26-58.90.
Read the two halves separately. The offence came in three goals better than the chances. The defence came in fourteen goals worse, and the chances themselves were already the worst on the club. Some of that fourteen is the .896 behind him; the 9th percentile is not.
Ten seasons, 565 games, 137 points.
The Finesse Game
110 shots at a median of 51 feet, 76 per cent from beyond forty and 6 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 79 shots on goal, three goals, 3.80 per cent — above the league rate for a defenceman, which is the one number in this report that is. Inside forty: 28 shots, two goals.
97.1 mph at the 88th percentile with 24 slap shots behind it. He is the fourth Detroit defenceman with a shot above the 85th percentile, and collectively they proved what that is worth.
Five goals and 14 assists at twenty minutes a night is a low return.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 222, and this is the case for him: 23.4 mph at the 96th percentile — genuinely fast for a man that size — against 0.6 bursts over twenty a game at the 30th and 2.90 miles a game at the 74th.
He can skate and mostly does not need to. What he does is finish checks and clear the front of the net: 51 penalty minutes in 76 games, and 62, 61, 50 and 48 in the four years before it.
Against a rush he is beaten more often than a top-four defenceman should be, and the 9th-percentile share is the aggregate of it.
The Intangibles
120th overall in 2009, six Winnipeg seasons, three in Montreal, a run to the 2021 Final and a deadline move to Florida.
Detroit signed him for four years at 31 to make the blue line harder to play against. He is 32, the possession numbers were the worst on the club, and there are three years left.
The physical half of the game is real and measured. The rest of this report is the price of it.
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
- 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.
“What he does is finish checks and clear the front of the net”
“What he does is finish checks and clear the front of the net”
“Against a rush he is beaten more often than a top-four defenceman should be, and the 9th-percentile share is the aggregate of it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,313 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.3%
- 9th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.5%
- 7th 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: 46 for, 73 against. Expected: 43.3 and 58.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 23.4 mph
- 98th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.61 a game
- Distance
- 2.90 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.1 mph
- 84th 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 · 1313 minutes at five-on-five
- Olli Maatta18%
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
- DET took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.3% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,313 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moritz Seider | 42.8% | 42.0% | 49.9% |
| Dylan Larkin | 43.8% | 41.7% | 52.5% |
| Filip Hronek | 43.1% | 42.1% | 48.1% |
42.8% together, 42.0% for him apart and 49.9% for Seider apart. Seider 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
152 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 51 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.