This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Caleb Jones
Colorado Avalanche Defense
The 6th percentile in top speed, and a defenceman whose ice conceded eighteen goals more than it scored.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | EDM | 17 | 1 | 5 | 6 | -9 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 4.8 | 19:48 |
| 2019-20 | EDM | 43 | 4 | 5 | 9 | -1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 38 | 10.5 | 14:08 |
| 2020-21 | EDM | 33 | 0 | 4 | 4 | -7 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 0.0 | 13:36 |
| 2021-22 | CHI | 51 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -3 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 57 | 8.8 | 16:43 |
| 2022-23 | CHI | 73 | 4 | 12 | 16 | -19 | 40 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 86 | 4.7 | 19:13 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 217 | 14 | 36 | 50 | -39 | 80 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 225 | 6.2 | 16:49 |
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
4 goals and 12 assists in 73 games with Chicago, minus-19, 19:13 a night — a career high in games and in ice time, on the worst club in the Western Conference.
45.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,239 minutes, the 23rd percentile, and his ice went 43-61 against an expectation of 45.13-54.32. Both ends short.
Five seasons, 217 games, 50 points. Edmonton drafted him, Chicago played him, Colorado will use him seventh.
The Finesse Game
86 shots at a median of 52 feet, 67 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 49 shots on goal, no goals. Inside forty: 34 shots, four goals. Every goal he scored came from inside the offensive zone proper, which is a sentence that applies to a great many defencemen and is worth writing down because the ice time suggests otherwise.
The shot measures 87.7 mph at the 28th percentile — below average, from a man taking two-thirds of his attempts from the blue line.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 184. The top speed reads 21.1 mph, the 6th percentile among the 574 skaters the feed covers, with 0.4 bursts over twenty a game at the 22nd and 2.67 miles a game at the 59th.
On the tracking he is inside the slowest forty skaters in a population of 574. For a defenceman that small it is the hardest number in this report to work around, and the 23rd-percentile possession share is what it looks like in practice.
40 penalty minutes in 73 games at 19 minutes is a moderate rate. He does not play a physical game and does not pretend to.
The Intangibles
117th overall in 2015, and a younger brother of Seth Jones — the two of them were teammates in Chicago last season, on a club that finished 30th.
He is a seventh defenceman who has spent five years being played as a fourth. Colorado is the first roster he has joined where that is unlikely to happen, and it is probably the best thing for him.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,239 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.4%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.1%
- 30th 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: 43 for, 61 against. Expected: 45.1 and 54.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 23 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 44 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 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 21.1 mph
- 32nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.44 a game
- Distance
- 2.67 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.7 mph
- 28th 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 with CHI · 1239 minutes at five-on-five
- Seth Jones30%
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
- CHI took 42.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 3.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,239 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seth Jones | 52.1% | 42.0% | 44.5% |
| Andreas Athanasiou | 48.3% | 44.0% | 40.0% |
| Jason Dickinson | 48.0% | 44.5% | 42.2% |
52.1% together, 42.0% for him apart and 44.5% for Jones apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
123 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.