This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
David Jiricek
Columbus Blue Jackets Defense
Sixth overall at eighteen, six foot four, and eleven goals conceded above expectation in six hundred minutes.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 18:04 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 43 | 1 | 9 | 10 | -4 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 38 | 2.6 | 14:36 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 47 | 1 | 9 | 10 | -8 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 43 | 2.3 | 14:54 |
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
1 goal and 9 assists in 43 games — 10 points at 14:36 a night, minus-4, with 1 game-winner on 38 shots at 2.63 per cent, and 22 penalty minutes. He was 20.
47.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 609 minutes, the 33rd percentile. His ice went 25-39 against an expectation of 25.20-28.01 — eleven goals conceded above expectation in six hundred minutes, the worst rate on the blue line.
The Finesse Game
38 attempts at a median of 55 feet, with 75 per cent from beyond 40 and 5 per cent from inside 20, converting at 2.63 per cent. One goal in 47 NHL games.
9 assists. The first pass is competent and he will attempt the outlet that a safer defenceman does not, and it is intercepted often enough to be part of the report. The shot from the point is heavy and has not yet gone in.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 204, and he defends the rush with reach that is not yet strength. He closes the gap early and takes the puck with his stick, and he loses the front of his own net to a heavy forward.
22 penalty minutes in 43 games. He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator, and the fouls he takes are the stick foul after losing a step.
The Intangibles
Sixth overall in 2022, out of Plzen, and 47 NHL games at 20 with a career minus-8.
He is one of nine top-ten picks on this roster. A 6-4 right-shot defenceman taken sixth overall is the single most valuable profile in the draft, and forty-three games behind the second-worst chance suppression in hockey is close to the worst possible place to find out whether he is one.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 609 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.4%
- 33rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.5%
- 32nd 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: 25 for, 39 against. Expected: 25.2 and 28.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 0 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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
2023-24 · 609 minutes at five-on-five
- Nick Blankenburgnow NSH12%
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
- CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.4% — 1.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 609 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ivan Provorov | 53.1% | 42.3% | 44.2% |
| Johnny Gaudreau | 49.9% | 46.3% | 49.2% |
| Adam Fantilli | 42.7% | 49.2% | 47.5% |
53.1% together, 42.3% for him apart and 44.2% for Provorov 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
60 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.