This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
David Savard
Montreal Canadiens Defense
The largest slot share of all 202 qualified defencemen, the 4th-fewest takeaways, and 20:47 a night on the worst defence in the league.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | CBJ | 31 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 5.9 | 16:34 |
| 2012-13 | CBJ | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 13:12 |
| 2013-14 | CBJ | 70 | 5 | 10 | 15 | +2 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 63 | 7.9 | 17:50 |
| 2014-15 | CBJ | 82 | 11 | 25 | 36 | 0 | 71 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 112 | 9.8 | 22:57 |
| 2015-16 | CBJ | 65 | 4 | 21 | 25 | -7 | 45 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 122 | 3.3 | 23:10 |
| 2016-17 | CBJ | 74 | 6 | 17 | 23 | +33 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 135 | 4.4 | 21:50 |
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 81 | 4 | 12 | 16 | +2 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 145 | 2.8 | 19:23 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 82 | 8 | 16 | 24 | +19 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 124 | 6.5 | 19:45 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 68 | 0 | 11 | 11 | -3 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 97 | 0.0 | 20:41 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ/TBL | 54 | 1 | 5 | 6 | -27 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 69 | 1.5 | 19:50 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 62 | 3 | 14 | 17 | -22 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 4.5 | 20:47 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 673 | 44 | 139 | 183 | -6 | 367 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 968 | 4.5 | 20:28 |
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
3 goals and 14 assists in sixty-two games at 20:47 a night, minus-22, thirty-six penalty minutes. Ninety-fourth overall in 2009, eleven seasons, 673 games.
The Finesse Game
27.6 per cent of his shots came from the slot — the largest share of all 202 qualified defencemen — off a 43-foot median that is the 2nd-shortest. He gets closer to the net than any defenceman in the league and takes almost none of them: 3.07 shots per 60 is the 13th percentile.
0.86 even-strength points per 60 is the 38th percentile and none of his seventeen points came on the power play.
0.33 takeaways per 60 is the 4th-fewest of 202 defencemen against 2.93 giveaways at the 96th percentile. That is the worst puck-handling ledger on a club that finished 25th in attempt share, and it is the clearest measured weakness in his file.
45.0 per cent of the expected goals is the 12th percentile and 43.7 per cent of the attempts the 5th. His ice went 40-64 against an expectation of 44.05-53.77.
Beside Ben Chiarot he read 40.5 per cent across 574 attempts; Chiarot away from him read 50.9. That is the single worst pairing figure in this chapter.
The Physical Game
5.91 blocks per 60 is the 90th percentile and 6.24 hits per 60 the 77th, at 6-1 and 235 pounds. This is what he is for and the record carries it.
0.84 penalties taken per 60 against 0.42 drawn gives a 25th-percentile net.
The Intangibles
21.2 mph is the 15th percentile, 0.4 bursts over 20 mph per 60 the 7th, and 8.12 miles per 60 the 15th. He is among the least mobile defencemen the league measures, playing twenty-one minutes a night on the club that allowed 319 goals.
98.2 mph is the 82nd percentile — the shot is there and he does not use it.
He is 31. The blocking and the hits are genuine and the possession record underneath them is among the worst in the league, and on a defence corps that has just lost four men, he is the one being asked to hold it together.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
27.6% of his attempts in the slot, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“5.91 blocks per 60 is the 90th percentile and 6.24 hits per 60 the 77th, at 6-1 and 235 pounds.”
“27.6 per cent of his shots came from the slot — the largest share of all 202 qualified defencemen — off a 43-foot median that is the 2nd-shortest.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,104 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45%
- 18th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.7%
- 9th 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, 64 against. Expected: 44.0 and 53.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 21.2 mph
- 36th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.15 a game
- Distance
- 2.81 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 98.2 mph
- 87th 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 · 1104 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, 2021-22
- The club
- MTL took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.0% — 1.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,104 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander Romanov | 47.6% | 43.2% | 45.8% |
| Nick Suzuki | 44.1% | 45.5% | 46.2% |
| Ben Chiarot | 40.5% | 46.6% | 50.9% |
47.6% together, 43.2% for him apart and 45.8% for Romanov apart. He was worse away from Romanov, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Romanov 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
87 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 54% from beyond forty.