Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

15

Dante Fabbro

Columbus Blue Jackets Defense

A plus-20 on a waiver claim, and 26 points from a right shot the club got for nothing.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19NSH4101-10000520.012:44
2019-20NSH645611-738100925.419:02
2020-21NSH4021012-123101593.419:19
2021-22NSH6632124+1324000883.419:03
2022-23NSH792911-4500001012.017:27
2023-24NSH5631013+924000654.616:21
2024-25NSH/CBJ6891726+20400038910.120:54
2025-26 so far
Career377257398+291992044995.018:36

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

9 goals and 17 assists in 68 games for 26 points, plus-20, on 20:54 a night after arriving on waivers in November.

50.2 per cent at five-on-five, the 54th percentile, over 1,212 minutes. His on-ice goals were 41-52 against an expected 50-50, so the five-on-five results ran 11 goals against him — the plus-20 came from special teams and the empty net.

The Finesse Game

Steady. 89 shots with 82 per cent from beyond 40 feet, and 9 goals from them is an unusually good return for a point shooter — the release is better than his reputation.

The first pass is quick and accurate and he does not stall a breakout. There is no rush game and no creativity, and 26 points is comfortably a career high because the ice time was.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 200, and honest. He defends his net front adequately, takes contact, and does not seek it.

40 penalty minutes over 68 games is a moderate rate. The durability has been reasonable.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick who was placed on waivers by Nashville and claimed for nothing, then played 21 minutes a night on a club that missed the playoffs by 2 points.

That is one of the better transactions in this edition. At 27 the projection is a second-pair right shot on a modest contract, which this blue line badly needed.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,212 minutes

Expected goals
50.2%
55th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.3%
57th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 41 for, 52 against. Expected: 50.5 and 50.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
36th
Numbers
55th

The two rank him within 19 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 315 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1139 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, 2024-25

The club
CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.2% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,212 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Zach Werenski51.1%46.0%53.7%
Kirill Marchenko50.9%49.8%50.2%
Dmitri Voronkov50.3%50.1%48.2%

51.1% together, 46.0% for him apart and 53.7% for Werenski apart. He was worse away from Werenski, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Werenski 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

136 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 54 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.