This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Cam Fowler

Fourteen years and 974 games in one uniform, 24:25 a night at 32, and a minus-36.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2010-11	ANA	76	10	30	40	-25	20	6	0	3	123	8.1	22:08
2011-12	ANA	82	5	24	29	-28	18	2	0	0	123	4.1	23:16
2012-13	ANA	37	1	10	11	-4	4	1	0	0	50	2.0	20:26
2013-14	ANA	70	6	30	36	+15	14	4	1	2	100	6.0	23:52
2014-15	ANA	80	7	27	34	+4	14	1	1	2	87	8.1	21:09
2015-16	ANA	69	5	23	28	-8	27	3	0	0	113	4.4	22:47
2016-17	ANA	80	11	28	39	+7	20	5	1	3	186	5.9	24:51
2017-18	ANA	67	8	24	32	+3	28	1	1	1	122	6.6	24:51
2018-19	ANA	59	5	18	23	-14	20	1	0	2	88	5.7	23:22
2019-20	ANA	59	9	20	29	0	20	2	0	2	117	7.7	21:59
2020-21	ANA	56	5	18	23	-4	18	0	0	1	75	6.7	21:46
2021-22	ANA	76	9	33	42	-9	14	6	0	1	124	7.3	24:25
2022-23	ANA	82	10	38	48	-23	14	4	0	1	130	7.7	24:10
2023-24	ANA	81	5	34	39	-36	24	2	0	0	109	4.6	24:25
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	974	96	357	453	-122	255	38	4	18	1547	6.2	23:15

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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 34 assists in 81 games — 39 points at 24:25 a night, with 2 power-play goals on 109 shots and 24 penalty minutes.

Minus-36. It is the worst plus-minus of a fourteen-year career and it is what happens when a club plays one man 24:25 against the other side’s best and has nobody to relieve him.

44.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,455 minutes, the 19th percentile. His ice went 37-74 against an expectation of 50.92-63.19 — eight goals of scoring missing, and five fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

109 attempts at a median of 47 feet, with 68 per cent from beyond 40 and 5 per cent from inside 20, converting at 4.6 per cent. The shot is a point shot and nothing else, and a killing box does not respect it.

He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and the skating is what has kept him at twenty-four minutes a night into his thirties. 34 assists and 357 for his career is the real number: he runs a power play from the blue line, he holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and the outlet is early.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 213 and he defends with position rather than force. He does not clear the front of his own net and he never has — 255 penalty minutes in 974 games is one of the lowest rates of any defenceman playing these minutes.

He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties. The body is not part of what he offers and asking him to add it at 32 is not a plan.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2010 and 974 games, 453 points and a career minus-122, every one of them for this club. He has played for eight coaches here and has been the best defenceman on the roster for most of it.

He is 32. Twenty-four minutes a night to a minus-36 is not a criticism of him; it is the shape of a roster that has nobody else to give them to, and the honest read is that this is a very good second-pairing defenceman being asked to be a first pairing for the fifth straight year.

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
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out**, and the skating is what has kept him at twenty-four minutes a night into his thirties.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**34 assists and 357 for his career** is the real number: he runs a power play from the blue line, he holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and the outlet is early.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear the front of his own net and he never has — 255 penalty minutes in 974 games is one of the lowest rates of any defenceman playing these minutes.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-2 and 213 and **he defends with position rather than force.**”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“**Twelfth overall in 2010** and **974 games, 453 points and a career minus-122**, every one of them for this club. He has played for eight coaches here and has been the best defenceman on the roster for most of it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,455 minutes

Expected goals: 44.6%; 19th pct
Shot attempts: 46.1%; 23rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 74 against. Expected: 50.9 and 63.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

24th

Numbers

19th

The two rank him within 5 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2023-24 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.73 a game
Distance: 3.48 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.2 mph; 35th pct

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

2023-24 · 1455 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2023-24

The club: ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.6% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,455 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Frank Vatrano	46.8%	43.5%	41.7%
Ryan Strome	41.9%	45.8%	45.5%
Troy Terry	47.9%	43.2%	46.8%

46.8% together, 43.5% for him apart and 41.7% for Vatrano 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

148 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.