Chris Tierney

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

3 goals and 7 assists in 36 games — 10 points — listed with Florida and Montreal, at 10:52 a night. Minus-8, 19 shots, six penalty minutes.

Every five-on-five minute this book has for him is Montreal’s — 347 of them — and across those he was on the ice for 37 per cent of the expected goals. That is the 1st percentile of this book, with the goals at 16-25 against an expectation of 9.68-16.49.

Read the second half of that carefully, because it does not run the way the first half does: the goals for came in seven above what the chances deserved and the goals against nine above. On 347 minutes those are small numbers with large error bars, and the honest summary is that almost nothing about this sample is reliable except the share itself, which is very bad.

He started 45.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 29th percentile.

Nine seasons, 597 games, 236 points, a career minus-73.

The Finesse Game

19 shots in thirty-six games, at a median of 33 feet.

Three goals on seventeen shots on goal, which is a 15.8 per cent rate on a sample that means nothing.

19 wrist shots out of 28 tracked attempts. A measured 74.2 mph shot, below the slowest reading of any man in this book who played forty games — he did not, so the comparison is only a direction.

What the record actually holds is 160 assists against 76 goals across nine seasons. He was a distributing third-line centre in San Jose and Ottawa and the passing was always the half that worked.

There is no shot to write about and there never was.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 191, with six penalty minutes.

Top speed 21.8 mph, the 23rd percentile; 0.8 bursts a game, the 41st; 1.73 miles a game, the 5th percentile — the lowest on this roster.

Ten minutes and fifty-two seconds a night is the reason for the last of those, and it is also the reason there is very little else to measure.

He does not play a physical game, has never taken penalties, and is not used on the penalty kill any more. At twenty-nine there is no part of the file that gets easier.

The Intangibles

Fifty-fifth overall in 2012 to San Jose, four seasons there, four in Ottawa, and then a season split between Florida and Montreal.

The 48 points in Ottawa in 2018-19 is the high-water mark and it is five seasons old. Everything since has gone in one direction.

He is a depth signing on a club that finished third overall, and the record says he is competing for a job that a 37 per cent chance share does not win.