This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Connor Clifton
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Eighty-eight penalty minutes at 196 pounds, and twelve goals of help on his ice.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | BOS | 19 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0.0 | 17:42 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 31 | 2 | 0 | 2 | +4 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 10.0 | 14:25 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 44 | 1 | 6 | 7 | +10 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 2.1 | 18:13 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 60 | 2 | 8 | 10 | -2 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 80 | 2.5 | 16:04 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 78 | 5 | 18 | 23 | +20 | 60 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 93 | 5.4 | 17:51 |
| 2023-24 | BUF | 79 | 4 | 14 | 18 | +12 | 88 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 77 | 5.2 | 16:33 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 311 | 14 | 47 | 61 | +49 | 245 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 340 | 4.1 | 16:53 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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 14 assists in 79 games — 18 points at 16:33 a night, plus-12, on 77 shots with 88 penalty minutes.
46.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,139 minutes, the 30th percentile. His ice went 48-42 against an expectation of 43.29-49.33 — eighteen goals scored above expectation in a third-pairing role, which is not a number that comes back and is the largest such gap on the roster.
The Finesse Game
77 attempts at a median of 50 feet, with 66 per cent from beyond 40 and 8 per cent from inside 20, converting at 5.19 per cent. Fourteen goals in 311 career games.
14 assists. He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is a simple one, and everything he offers happens without the puck.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 196, and he plays a great deal heavier than that. He finishes every check and he is an agitator — he talks, he gives the extra shove after the whistle, and he is the man on this blue line opponents notice.
88 penalty minutes in 79 games and 245 in 311 for his career, which is a high rate for a defenceman his size. He retaliates, and a share of the 88 is the second penalty rather than the first.
He blocks shots and he will fight men forty pounds heavier.
The Intangibles
A hundred and thirty-third overall in 2013 by Phoenix, four years at Quinnipiac, and 311 NHL games at 29 with a career plus-49.
A fifth-round pick who becomes a 300-game NHL defenceman by being the hardest man on the ice at 196 pounds has earned every one of them. On a blue line whose two best players do not punish anybody, he is the entire physical dimension.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“**He finishes every check and he is an agitator** — he talks, he gives the extra shove after the whistle, and he is the man on this blue line opponents notice.”
“**He finishes every check and he is an agitator** — he talks, he gives the extra shove after the whistle, and he is the man on this blue line opponents notice.”
“**6-0 and 196, and he plays a great deal heavier than that.**”
“**He retaliates**, and a share of the 88 is the second penalty rather than the first.”
“He blocks shots and he will fight men forty pounds heavier.”
“**He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is a simple one**, and everything he offers happens without the puck.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,139 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.7%
- 30th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.1%
- 48th 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: 48 for, 42 against. Expected: 43.3 and 49.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 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, 2023-24 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 61st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.54 a game
- Distance
- 2.30 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.3 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 1139 minutes at five-on-five
- Jacob Bryson26%
- Owen Power17%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.7% — 2.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,139 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| JJ Peterka | 50.8% | 45.2% | 52.5% |
| Dylan Cozens | 40.4% | 49.0% | 51.8% |
| Jacob Bryson | 48.9% | 46.1% | 50.1% |
50.8% together, 45.2% for him apart and 52.5% for Peterka apart. He was worse away from Peterka, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Peterka did.
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
109 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 41 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.