This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Damon Severson
New Jersey Devils Defense
Forty-six points at 23:36 a night, a career minus-129 across 566 games, and the 12th-percentile block rate.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | NJD | 51 | 5 | 12 | 17 | -13 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 93 | 5.4 | 21:58 |
| 2015-16 | NJD | 72 | 1 | 20 | 21 | -8 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 1.1 | 18:10 |
| 2016-17 | NJD | 80 | 3 | 28 | 31 | -31 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 125 | 2.4 | 20:21 |
| 2017-18 | NJD | 76 | 9 | 15 | 24 | -8 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 121 | 7.4 | 19:41 |
| 2018-19 | NJD | 82 | 11 | 28 | 39 | -27 | 58 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 146 | 7.5 | 22:03 |
| 2019-20 | NJD | 69 | 8 | 23 | 31 | -20 | 52 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 114 | 7.0 | 22:58 |
| 2020-21 | NJD | 56 | 3 | 18 | 21 | -8 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 91 | 3.3 | 22:29 |
| 2021-22 | NJD | 80 | 11 | 35 | 46 | -14 | 57 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 158 | 7.0 | 23:36 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 566 | 51 | 179 | 230 | -129 | 350 | 11 | 0 | 5 | 942 | 5.4 | 21:22 |
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
11 goals and 35 assists in eighty games — 46 points, at 23:36 a night, the 88th percentile among defencemen. Minus-14, fifty-seven penalty minutes. Sixtieth overall in 2012, nine seasons, 566 games.
A career minus-129 across those 566 games is among the largest negative figures any active defenceman carries, and it belongs to the clubs as much as to him.
Thirty-five assists from a defenceman is a career high, and 179 of his 230 career points are assists.
The Finesse Game
1.16 even-strength points per 60 is the 75th percentile and 35 per cent of his points came on the power play, off 2:20 a night at the 84th. 7.0 per cent shooting is the 84th percentile on 5.02 shots per 60 at the 64th — eleven goals from the point is a real return.
51.8 per cent of the expected goals is the 65th percentile and 51.2 per cent of the attempts the 65th, at 23:36 a night against the best available opposition. His ice went 57-67 against an expectation of 62.87-58.39 — six goals short going forward and nine long against, both of which point at the crease.
1.21 takeaways per 60 is the 70th percentile against 2.00 giveaways at the 65th.
The Physical Game
2.92 blocks per 60 is the 12th percentile of defencemen — a genuinely low figure for a man playing twenty-four minutes a night — and 2.89 hits per 60 is the 35th. He does not block and he does not hit, at the largest workload on the club.
0.22 penalties drawn per 60 is the 17th percentile against 0.86 taken, and the net of minus 0.64 is the 9th percentile. Fifty-seven penalty minutes and almost nothing coming back.
The Intangibles
22.3 mph is the 69th percentile, 0.9 bursts over 20 mph per 60 the 23rd, and 8.09 miles per 60 the 14th. He covers less ground than eighty-six per cent of defencemen while playing the most minutes on the club.
He is 28. Forty-six points at twenty-four minutes a night is a genuine top-pair offensive season and every defensive column underneath it is below average — the blocks, the hits, the penalty ledger, the ground covered. That is a specific kind of defenceman and this club has him playing the hardest minutes it has.
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
“Thirty-five assists from a defenceman is a career high, and 179 of his 230 career points are assists.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,453 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.8%
- 69th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.2%
- 67th 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: 57 for, 67 against. Expected: 62.9 and 58.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 31 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 — 58 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
- 22.3 mph
- 79th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.34 a game
- Distance
- 3.18 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.4 mph
- 73rd 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 · 1453 minutes at five-on-five
- Ryan Graves27%
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
- NJD took 51.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,453 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jonas Siegenthaler | 54.9% | 49.7% | 51.4% |
| Jesper Bratt | 57.5% | 49.2% | 56.2% |
| Ryan Graves | 52.3% | 51.7% | 52.0% |
54.9% together, 49.7% for him apart and 51.4% for Siegenthaler apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
221 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.