Colton Sissons

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

79 games, 7 goals and 21 assists at 16:10 a night, plus-2, thirty penalty minutes, 87 shots. Fiftieth overall in 2012, eight seasons, 455 games, 135 points — all of them here.

The Finesse Game

2:55 short-handed a night is the most of the 393 forwards who played forty games — nobody in the league killed more.

4.09 shots per 60 is the 11th-lowest of the 393 and 0.89 takeaways per 60 the 25th-lowest. Neither figure is a criticism on its own; together they describe a man whose job has nothing to do with the puck.

1.42 even-strength points per 60 is the 28th percentile and fourteen per cent of his points came on the power play, where he takes twenty-six seconds a night.

Fifty-two per cent of his shots came from the slot at a 24-foot median — ordinary locations at almost no volume, converting at 8.0 per cent.

49.1 per cent of the expected goals and 49.4 per cent of the attempts from 35.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 46th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. That is one of the forty or so hardest assignments in hockey and he came out level. His ice went 32-36 against an expectation of 35.34-36.62.

He and Tanner Jeannot took 49.8 per cent of the attempts together across 1,328 — the pair better than either apart, on a line whose whole purpose is the other end.

The Physical Game

8.83 hits per 60 is the 61st-most of the 393 forwards, at 6-1 and 200 pounds in sixteen minutes a night. 2.07 blocks per 60 is the 69th percentile.

0.33 penalties drawn per 60 is the 6th percentile. Against 0.70 taken the net is the 48th-worst of 393, and thirty penalty minutes across seventy-nine games is the cost.

The Intangibles

22.3 mph is the 42nd percentile, 3.2 bursts per 60 the 87th of 365 forwards, 9.16 miles per 60 the 52nd-fewest. Slow, rarely sprinting, covering little ground — none of which is what the job description would predict.

He is 28 and has played 455 games for one club. The league’s heaviest penalty-killing forward, on the league’s busiest penalty kill, starting more than a third of his shifts in his own end and finishing level. Twenty-eight points is the whole of what that costs.