This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Daniel Sprong
Detroit Red Wings Right Wing
Twenty-one goals in eleven and a half minutes a night, and none of them from beyond forty feet on 44 attempts.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | PIT | 18 | 2 | 0 | 2 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 8.7 | 8:44 |
| 2017-18 | PIT | 8 | 2 | 1 | 3 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 22 | 9.1 | 13:59 |
| 2018-19 | PIT/ANA | 63 | 14 | 9 | 23 | -16 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 125 | 11.2 | 11:58 |
| 2019-20 | ANA | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 14:06 |
| 2020-21 | WSH | 42 | 13 | 7 | 20 | +7 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 74 | 17.6 | 11:40 |
| 2021-22 | WSH/SEA | 63 | 14 | 6 | 20 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 153 | 9.2 | 12:59 |
| 2022-23 | SEA | 66 | 21 | 25 | 46 | +13 | 14 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 147 | 14.3 | 11:25 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 268 | 67 | 49 | 116 | +3 | 44 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 561 | 11.9 | 11:56 |
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
21 goals and 25 assists in 66 games for Seattle, plus-13, 11:25 a night — 46 points on the ice time of a fourth-line winger.
That is 0.70 points a game at 11:25, which is a first-line rate on a fourth-line assignment.
55.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 637 minutes, the 90th percentile, with his ice at 40-21 against an expectation of 28.67-22.69. Eleven goals better than the chances at the offensive end, which is a large finishing surplus on a small sample.
Seven seasons, 268 games, 67 goals — and 21 of them last season.
The Finesse Game
147 shots at a median of 34 feet, 21 per cent from inside twenty and 31 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside forty: 103 shots on goal, 21 goals, 20.39 per cent. Beyond forty: 44 shots, none.
Every goal he scored came from inside forty feet, and nearly a third of his volume went the other way. On a player taking 147 shots in 66 games that is a meaningful amount of waste.
98.1 mph at the 92nd percentile with 25 slap shots behind it. He is a shooter first and the release is the reason a fourth-line winger scored 21.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 195. 22.6 mph at the 65th percentile, 1.5 bursts a game at the 72nd, and 1.81 miles a game at the 8th percentile — the lowest mileage of any Detroit forward, and a direct function of eleven-minute nights.
14 penalty minutes in 66 games. He does not defend, does not forecheck hard and is not asked to.
That is the whole reason a 21-goal scorer plays eleven minutes: five clubs in seven years have all reached the same conclusion about the half of the game he does not play.
The Intangibles
46th overall in 2015 out of Charlottetown, born in Amsterdam, and four organisations in seven seasons.
He scores. He has always scored, at every level, and no coach has ever trusted him. Detroit is the fifth club to try, on a one-year contract, and the honest reading of the record is that the finishing is real and the 90th-percentile possession share came in 637 sheltered minutes.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
31.1% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“Every goal he scored came from inside forty feet”
“He does not defend, does not forecheck hard and is not asked to.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 637 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.8%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.3%
- 87th 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: 40 for, 21 against. Expected: 28.7 and 22.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 78 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 — 56 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 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 71st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.48 a game
- Distance
- 1.81 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 98.1 mph
- 98th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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 SEA · 637 minutes at five-on-five
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
- SEA took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.8% — 3.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 637 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morgan Geekie | 50.5% | 63.5% | 52.9% |
| Brandon Tanev | 60.9% | 51.7% | 49.0% |
| Ryan Donato | 54.3% | 56.8% | 50.4% |
50.5% together, 63.5% for him apart and 52.9% for Geekie apart. He was better away from Geekie, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Geekie.
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
209 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 21% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.