This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
David Savard
Montreal Canadiens Defense
Twenty-two minutes a night at 21.0 miles an hour, from the hardest deployment on the club.
| 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 | MTL | 62 | 3 | 17 | 20 | -14 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 63 | 4.8 | 22:23 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 735 | 47 | 156 | 203 | -20 | 407 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 1031 | 4.6 | 20:38 |
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
3 goals and 17 assists in 62 games — 20 points — at 22:23 a night. Minus-14, 63 shots, 40 penalty minutes.
43.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 12th percentile, with his ice at 37-55 against an expectation of 42.28-55.23. Five goals short at the offensive end and exactly the chances at the defensive.
That last part matters. The goals against were what the chances predicted, which means the 55 were not bad luck and were not the goaltending. They were the shifts.
His 39.6 per cent offensive-zone start share is the 13th percentile — the hardest on the club, shared exactly with Dvorak, and given to the oldest defenceman on it.
Twelve seasons, 735 games, 203 points.
The Finesse Game
63 shots at a median of 46 feet, 10 per cent from inside twenty and 62 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 34 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 25 shots, 3 goals.
Sixty-three shots in sixty-two games is one of the lowest volumes of any twenty-two-minute defenceman in the league, and 47 goals in 735 career games is the record behind it.
96.0 mph at the 83rd percentile, on nine slap shots — heavy, on volume too low to trust.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 235, and 40 penalty minutes.
Top speed 21.0 mph, the 3rd percentile. Bursts 0.3 a game, the 10th. 3.05 miles a game, the 82nd.
That combination — a great deal of ground covered at close to the slowest measured speed in the league — is the ordinary shape for a twenty-two-minute defenceman and should not be read as a verdict on its own. Of the 192 defencemen who played forty games last season, 59 covered three miles a game and 24 of those never broke 22 mph.
What is his own is the 3rd percentile, which is near the floor of that group. He defends by blocking shots, clearing the crease and taking the body, and he is beaten to the outside by anyone who chooses to go there.
The Intangibles
Ninety-fourth overall in 2009 to Columbus, ten seasons there, a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2021, and two Montreal years since.
He is thirty-two, plays twenty-two minutes against the other club’s best line on a club that finished twenty-eighth, and the 12th-percentile chance share is a description of both. This book would want to see what he does at eighteen minutes on a third pair before writing him off, and Montreal has not given him that.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
40% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 10th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He defends by blocking shots, clearing the crease and taking the body, and he is beaten to the outside by anyone who chooses to go there.”
“He defends by blocking shots, clearing the crease and taking the body, and he is beaten to the outside by anyone who chooses to go there.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,134 minutes
- Expected goals
- 43.4%
- 12th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.2%
- 5th 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: 37 for, 55 against. Expected: 42.3 and 55.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 36 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 65 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 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 28th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.27 a game
- Distance
- 3.05 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.0 mph
- 76th 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 · 1134 minutes at five-on-five
- Kaiden Guhle32%
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
- MTL took 44.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.4% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,134 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Suzuki | 43.1% | 43.5% | 43.8% |
| Kaiden Guhle | 40.8% | 44.5% | 43.4% |
| Mike Matheson | 46.4% | 42.2% | 44.1% |
43.1% together, 43.5% for him apart and 43.8% for Suzuki apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
78 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.