Brenden Dillon

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

79 games, 3 goals and 17 assists at 18:50 a night, plus-16, sixty-seven penalty minutes, 85 shots. Undrafted, and 733 games and a career plus-44 across eleven seasons out of it.

The Finesse Game

Three goals from eighty-five shots is 3.5 per cent, and 3.43 shots per 60 is the 23rd percentile from a 54-foot median — the 91st percentile — with eighty-one per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet.

0.89 even-strength points per 60 is the 42nd percentile and none of his twenty points came on the power play, off two seconds a night with the man advantage.

0.65 takeaways per 60 is the 26th percentile, which for a defensive defenceman is the number that ought to be higher.

48.6 per cent of the expected goals is the 40th percentile and 48.1 per cent of the attempts the 34th, out of 53.4 per cent offensive-zone starts.

And the goal ledger is the file. His ice went 57-50 against an expectation of 57.4-60.83. Level in front and eleven fewer against than the model asked — the largest defensive surplus of any Winnipeg skater, and the plus-16 comes straight out of it.

The with-and-without complicates it. With Neal Pionk he took 47.8 per cent of the attempts across 1,541 — the largest pairing in this chapter — and 49.7 per cent apart from him. The pair costs Dillon about two points of share and gains Pionk about three.

The Physical Game

8.55 hits per 60 is the 18th-most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-4 and 225 pounds.

4.36 blocks per 60 is the 56th percentile and 1:45 a night short-handed the 48th.

1.05 penalties taken per 60 against 0.52 drawn is a net of minus 0.52, the 16th percentile among defencemen, and sixty-seven penalty minutes came out of seventy-nine games — 690 across 733 career games.

The Intangibles

22.5 mph is the 79th percentile among the 192 tracked defencemen, 2.0 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 64th and 8.61 miles per 60 the 66th. Ordinary or a shade better in all three at 6-4 and 31, which is more than the reputation allows for.

He is 31, undrafted out of Seattle in the Western league, with 153 points in 733 games. Eleven goals of defensive surplus on a club that finished 23rd in expected goals against per sixty is the whole case and it is a good one. The penalty differential is the cost, and at nearly seven hundred career penalty minutes it is not going to change.