This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Damon Severson
Columbus Blue Jackets Defense
The 98th percentile in expected-goal share, and his ice scored seventeen goals fewer than the chances predicted.
| 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 | NJD | 81 | 7 | 26 | 33 | +9 | 38 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 102 | 6.9 | 19:57 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 647 | 58 | 205 | 263 | -120 | 388 | 12 | 1 | 7 | 1044 | 5.6 | 21:11 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
7 goals and 26 assists in 81 games for New Jersey, plus-9, 19:57 a night — the first plus season of his career.
59.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 98th percentile. Nothing else on Columbus’s roster is within thirteen points of it.
And then: his ice went 60-50 against an expectation of 77.06-51.97. Seventeen goals short of expectation at the offensive end, which is a very large gap for a defenceman playing twenty minutes. New Jersey’s shooters did not convert what he generated, which is a finishing story and belongs to them rather than to him.
Nine seasons, 647 games, 263 points, all of it in New Jersey.
The Finesse Game
102 shots at a median of 49 feet, 66 per cent from beyond forty, 7 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 63 shots, one goal, 1.59 per cent — half the league rate for a defenceman. Inside forty: 39 shots, six goals, 15.38 per cent.
So the pattern this book keeps finding holds again: the goals are close, the volume is far, and the two barely overlap. His career high is eleven goals and he has 58 in nine years.
The 205 career assists are the game. 92.1 mph at the 60th percentile — an ordinary shot used mainly to start something.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 204. 2.78 miles a game at the 67th percentile, 21.7 mph at the 20th, 0.4 bursts a game at the 19th. Below-average speed, ordinary mileage.
38 penalty minutes in 81 games. He is not physical and does not need to be at 20 minutes a night; the defensive work is positional and the expected-goals-against share says it has been effective for a decade.
52.9 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 62nd percentile, which is a mildly favourable deployment and is worth knowing before reading the possession numbers as a verdict.
The Intangibles
60th overall in 2012, out of Kelowna, and nine seasons in one organisation before Columbus traded for him in June and signed him for eight years.
That is a long contract for a player turning 29 who has never been a first-pair defenceman on a good team. The 98th-percentile possession season is the reason it was signed. The honest caution is that it was earned on New Jersey’s second pair, behind Hamilton and Hughes, and Columbus have neither.
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
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
59.7% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 54.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.6, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“The 205 career assists are the game.”
“the defensive work is positional and the expected-goals-against share says it has been effective for a decade”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,400 minutes
- Expected goals
- 59.7%
- 98th pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.5%
- 94th 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: 60 for, 50 against. Expected: 77.1 and 52.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 69 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2022-23 · 81 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 53rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.40 a game
- Distance
- 2.78 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.1 mph
- 53rd 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 90.0
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
2022-23 with NJD · 1400 minutes at five-on-five
- Kevin Bahl22%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- NJD took 56.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 59.7% — 3.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,400 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Haula | 62.8% | 58.4% | 52.0% |
| Brendan Smith | 61.0% | 59.2% | 51.3% |
| Jack Hughes | 62.5% | 58.5% | 55.4% |
62.8% together, 58.4% for him apart and 52.0% for Haula 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
144 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.