Chris Wideman
Montreal Canadiens Defense
Twenty-seven points from a 5-10 third-pair defenceman, with the 3rd-most giveaways and the 6th-worst penalty ledger of 202.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | OTT | 64 | 6 | 7 | 13 | +4 | 34 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 87 | 6.9 | 13:57 |
| 2016-17 | OTT | 76 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +7 | 46 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 123 | 4.1 | 13:58 |
| 2017-18 | OTT | 16 | 3 | 5 | 8 | +5 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 12.5 | 11:33 |
| 2018-19 | OTT/EDM/FLA | 25 | 2 | 5 | 7 | -12 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 27 | 7.4 | 13:04 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 64 | 4 | 23 | 27 | -25 | 67 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 5.3 | 14:53 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 245 | 20 | 52 | 72 | -21 | 171 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 337 | 5.9 | 13:57 |
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
4 goals and 23 assists in sixty-four games at 14:53 a night — the 7th percentile for ice time among defencemen — minus-25, sixty-seven penalty minutes. 5-10 and 180 pounds, 100th overall in 2009, and 245 NHL games at 32.
Twenty-seven points is more than a third of his career total of 72.
The Finesse Game
Forty-four per cent of his points came on the power play, the 96th percentile among defencemen. That is where the season lives, and it is a narrow place to keep it.
1.14 even-strength points per 60 is the 72nd percentile on 4.79 shots per 60 at the 56th. Six per cent from the slot, a 51-foot median — a point shot and nothing else.
3.59 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd-most of all 202 qualified defencemen. On a club that finished 25th in attempt share, the man handling the puck most on the third pair is losing it more than almost anyone at his position.
47.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 31st percentile and 49.8 per cent of the attempts the 49th. Those are, oddly, among the better figures on this roster. His ice went 27-41 against an expectation of 30.95-34.16.
The Physical Game
2.90 blocks per 60 is the 11th percentile and 2.77 hits per 60 the 31st. At 180 pounds he does neither.
1.51 penalties taken per 60 is the 97th percentile and the net of minus 0.82 is the 6th-worst of 202 defencemen, from sixty-seven minutes in sixty-four games. He draws well — 0.69 per 60, the 87th — and gives it all back and more.
The Intangibles
21.5 mph is the 29th percentile, 1.1 bursts per 60 the 36th, 8.48 miles per 60 the 53rd. Ordinary to slow.
95.9 mph is the 63rd percentile, which is the tool the power-play time is built on.
He is 32 with 245 games spread across seven seasons and a career that has never held a full-time job. Twenty-seven points in fifteen minutes a night is genuinely useful and almost all of it is the power play, and the giveaway and penalty columns are what a club pays for it.
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.
- 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.
“1.51 penalties taken per 60 is the 97th percentile and the net of minus 0.82 is the 6th-worst of 202 defencemen, from sixty-seven minutes in sixty-four games.”
“3.59 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd-most of all 202 qualified defencemen.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 778 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.5%
- 35th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.8%
- 53rd 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: 27 for, 41 against. Expected: 30.9 and 34.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 22 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 — 52 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 · 64 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 49th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.28 a game
- Distance
- 2.10 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.9 mph
- 75th 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 · 778 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, 2021-22
- The club
- MTL took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.5% — 1.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 778 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander Romanov | 49.2% | 46.9% | 45.9% |
| Nick Suzuki | 48.3% | 47.2% | 44.9% |
| Mike Hoffman | 47.2% | 47.6% | 41.7% |
49.2% together, 46.9% for him apart and 45.9% for Romanov apart. Romanov was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Romanov than for him.
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
89 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.