Carson Soucy

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

64 games, 10 goals and 11 assists at 17:40 a night, plus-7, forty-seven penalty minutes, 97 shots. One hundred and thirty-seventh overall in 2013 by Minnesota — the fifth round — four seasons, 172 games, 52 points, a career plus-43.

The Finesse Game

Ten goals from ninety-seven shots is 10.3 per cent, the 5th-best of the 202 defencemen who played forty games. That is a shooting percentage no defenceman sustains — his previous three seasons produced eight goals in 108 games — and it is where ten of his twenty-one points came from.

1.03 even-strength points per 60 is the 63rd percentile and ten per cent of his points came on the power play off forty-three seconds a night.

5.15 shots per 60 is the 68th percentile from a 49-foot median with fifteen per cent from the slot — a point shot that happened to go in.

50.8 per cent of the expected goals and 50.6 per cent of the attempts, out of 50.3 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 335th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — exactly level, and the flattest deployment on the club.

His ice went 39-40 against an expectation of 35.94-34.79.

The Physical Game

6.26 hits per 60 is the 77th percentile among defencemen, at 6-4 and 211 pounds.

1.11 penalties taken per 60 is the 91st percentile among defencemen against 0.32 drawn, and the net figure of minus-0.80 is the 3rd-lowest of the 202.

Forty-seven penalty minutes in sixty-four games on a club that already spent 4:25 a game short-handed.

The Intangibles

21.0 mph is the 17th-slowest of the 192 defencemen the tracking measures and 0.4 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 10th-fewest.

Against 8.72 miles per 60 at the 82nd percentile. Enormous ground covered by a man who is almost never at speed — an unusually pure example of a signature this book sees often.

He is 28 with 172 NHL games and a career plus-43 across four seasons. The hits, the plus-minus and the ground covered are real. The shooting percentage will not repeat, the penalty ledger is the 3rd-worst at the position, and two of the three worst skating numbers on this blue line are his.