This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Colton Parayko
St. Louis Blues Defense
The hardest shot of all 192 defencemen, and the 8th-percentile attempt share on the biggest workload on the club.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | STL | 79 | 9 | 24 | 33 | +28 | 29 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 165 | 5.5 | 19:23 |
| 2016-17 | STL | 81 | 4 | 31 | 35 | +7 | 32 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 188 | 2.1 | 21:12 |
| 2017-18 | STL | 82 | 6 | 29 | 35 | -7 | 13 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 212 | 2.8 | 22:37 |
| 2018-19 | STL | 80 | 10 | 18 | 28 | +20 | 15 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 176 | 5.7 | 22:47 |
| 2019-20 | STL | 64 | 10 | 18 | 28 | +8 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 162 | 6.2 | 23:00 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 32 | 2 | 10 | 12 | -2 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 3.3 | 21:20 |
| 2021-22 | STL | 80 | 6 | 29 | 35 | +16 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 135 | 4.4 | 23:34 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 498 | 47 | 159 | 206 | +70 | 137 | 16 | 0 | 11 | 1098 | 4.3 | 22:01 |
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
80 games, 6 goals and 29 assists at 23:34 a night, plus-16, eighteen penalty minutes, 135 shots. Eighty-sixth overall in 2012 by St Louis — the third round — seven seasons, 498 games, 206 points.
The Finesse Game
23:34 a night is the 88th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games, and it is the largest workload on the club.
His shot is 102.0 mph, the hardest of all 192 defencemen the tracking measures. Nobody at the position shoots harder, and he scored six goals.
A 47-foot median shot with sixty per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet, at 6-6 and 228 pounds, and 5.38 blocks per 60 at the 82nd percentile.
1.62 takeaways per 60 is the 91st percentile against 1.69 giveaways at the 47th.
And 44.2 per cent of the attempts is the 8th percentile, 46.7 per cent of the expected goals the 26th, out of 40.2 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 92nd-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
His ice went 81-77 against an expectation of 61.26-69.84 — twenty more goals in front than the model asked and seven more against.
The Physical Game
0.29 penalties taken per 60 is the 10th percentile among defencemen and the net of plus-0.255 is the 9th-best of the 202.
2.29 hits per 60 is the 21st percentile. He is 6-6 and 228 pounds and does not hit; the reach does it instead.
The Intangibles
22.5 mph is the 79th percentile and 3.4 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 92nd, against 8.38 miles per 60 at the 40th.
Fast for the size and frequently at speed, on a workload where nobody covers much ground per minute.
He is 29, in his seventh season, and has never scored more than ten goals. The reach, the shot, the discipline and eighty games of the hardest chair on the club are four things that hold up. An attempt share in the bottom tenth of the league is the fifth fact and it is the one that ends the argument — this is a very large man defending a great deal and moving the puck the other way rarely.
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
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
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
20:34 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
40% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“A 47-foot median shot with sixty per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet, at 6-6 and 228 pounds, and 5.38 blocks per 60 at the 82nd percentile.”
“0.29 penalties taken per 60 is the 10th percentile among defencemen and the net of plus-0.255 is the 9th-best of the 202.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,646 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.7%
- 28th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.2%
- 11th 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: 81 for, 77 against. Expected: 61.3 and 69.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 56 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 69 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 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 86th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.32 a game
- Distance
- 3.29 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 102.0 mph
- 100th 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 · 1646 minutes at five-on-five
- Niko Mikkola33%
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
- STL took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.7% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,646 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marco Scandella | 43.4% | 48.7% | 46.6% |
| Niko Mikkola | 47.7% | 46.3% | 47.1% |
| Ryan O'Reilly | 44.5% | 47.8% | 53.6% |
43.4% together, 48.7% for him apart and 46.6% for Scandella 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
181 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.