This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Casey Fitzgerald
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Thirty-six games at 16:53 in a first NHL season at twenty-five, and a 20.9 mph top speed at the 2nd percentile.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | BUF | 36 | 0 | 6 | 6 | -19 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 41 | 0.0 | 16:53 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 36 | 0 | 6 | 6 | -19 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 41 | 0.0 | 16:53 |
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
0 goals and 6 assists in 36 games — 6 points at 16:53 a night, minus-19, on 41 shots and 36 penalty minutes.
48.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 571 minutes, which is the second-best figure of any Buffalo defenceman. And his ice went 19-36 against an expectation of 21.02-22.69 — two goals of scoring missing and thirteen more conceded than the chances predicted.
Nineteen goals for and thirty-six against in 571 minutes is the worst ratio of any Buffalo defenceman, and the gap between that and a 48.1 chance share is the goaltending: Buffalo’s crease finished 26.5 goals below expectation, 28th in the league.
The Finesse Game
41 attempts, no goals, 6 points, and 6 in 36 career games. There is nothing here to describe.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 188, which is small, and he blocks, he finishes his check and 36 penalty minutes in 36 games is a small defenceman refusing to be pushed.
Top speed 20.9 mph is the 2nd percentile among the skaters this book tracks. A 36-game season gives fewer chances to set a maximum than a full one, and it is still a number that says the feet are not NHL feet.
The Intangibles
Eighty-sixth overall in 2016, out of Boston College, and a first NHL season at twenty-five after four in Rochester.
He is 25. He is a seventh defenceman on a club that had to dress a seventh defenceman thirty-six times, and with Owen Power arriving and Mattias Samuelsson signed long-term, that is not a job that will exist here much longer.
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
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.
“he blocks, he finishes his check and 36 penalty minutes in 36 games is a small defenceman refusing to be pushed”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 571 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.1%
- 39th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.5%
- 41st 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: 19 for, 36 against. Expected: 21.0 and 22.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 31 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 49 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, 2021-22 · 36 games
- Top speed
- 20.9 mph
- 23rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.28 a game
- Distance
- 2.45 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.5 mph
- 33rd 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 90.4
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
2021-22 · 571 minutes at five-on-five
- Jacob Bryson23%
- Will Butcheroff the roster16%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.1% — 1.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 571 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mattias Samuelsson | 44.0% | 50.8% | 47.3% |
| Dylan Cozens | 51.1% | 46.9% | 47.2% |
| Jeff Skinner | 58.9% | 43.8% | 48.2% |
44.0% together, 50.8% for him apart and 47.3% for Samuelsson apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
46 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 0 of them goals. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.