Derek Grant
Anaheim Ducks Center
A 6-3 fourth-line centre who kills 2:25 a night at the 98th percentile, starts in his own end at the 3rd, and covers less ground per sixty than any forward in the league.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-13 | OTT | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 8:40 |
| 2013-14 | OTT | 20 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 0.0 | 9:34 |
| 2015-16 | CGY | 15 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0.0 | 10:53 |
| 2016-17 | BUF/NSH | 46 | 0 | 4 | 4 | -5 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 0.0 | 9:45 |
| 2017-18 | ANA | 66 | 12 | 12 | 24 | +3 | 11 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 65 | 18.5 | 11:06 |
| 2018-19 | PIT/ANA | 56 | 4 | 10 | 14 | -6 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 74 | 5.4 | 11:41 |
| 2019-20 | ANA/PHI | 56 | 15 | 10 | 25 | +1 | 30 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 94 | 16.0 | 13:55 |
| 2020-21 | ANA | 46 | 6 | 9 | 15 | -4 | 25 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 66 | 9.1 | 14:34 |
| 2021-22 | ANA | 71 | 15 | 14 | 29 | -16 | 27 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 117 | 12.8 | 14:19 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 381 | 52 | 62 | 114 | -38 | 137 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 514 | 10.1 | 12:20 |
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
15 goals and 14 assists in 71 games — 29 points at 14:19 a night, minus-16, with 2 power-play goals and 1 shorthanded on 117 shots and 27 penalty minutes.
Fifteen goals matches his career high, set two seasons earlier at twenty-nine, off 12.8 per cent shooting, and 52 goals in 381 career games says how unusual either year was.
46.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 816 minutes, the 18th percentile, and 45.0 per cent of the shot attempts, the 12th. His ice went 29-43 against an expectation of 30.91-36.08 — two goals of scoring missing and seven more conceded than the chances predicted.
37.9 per cent of his even-strength time was spent in the offensive zone, the 3rd percentile among the league’s forwards. He was sent out to start shifts in his own end all season, and a chance share at the 18th percentile is what that job looks like on a bad club.
The Finesse Game
117 attempts at a median shot distance of 17 feet, the 4th percentile — the closest shot chart of any forward on this roster — with 53 per cent of them from inside 20. Every one of the fifteen goals came from standing somewhere unpleasant.
There is nothing else. 7 per cent of his points came on the power play, the 29th percentile, off 0:29 a night of it, and 1.24 takeaways per 60 at the 22nd. He is a net-front presence and a faceoff man and the club has never asked him to be anything more.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 210. 4.07 hits per 60 is the 53rd percentile and 2.89 blocks per 60 the 91st — he defends by filling a lane and finishing a check when one comes to him, not by hunting.
2:25 a night shorthanded is the 98th percentile among the league forwards. Only a handful of forwards in hockey killed more, and on the 32nd-ranked penalty kill in the league he was doing it without much help.
The skating is the limit and it is stark. 8.68 miles per sixty is the 1st percentile among forwards, 1.2 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 4th, and the top speed of 21.8 mph is the 16th. He covers less ground per minute of ice than any forward in this book. At thirty-two that is not going to reverse.
The Intangibles
One hundred and nineteenth overall in 2008, and 381 NHL games spread across Ottawa, Calgary, Buffalo, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Anaheim, which he has now arrived at more than once.
He turns 33 in April. He is exactly what a rebuilding club keeps for one more year and exactly what a contender pays a fourth-round pick for in March, and Anaheim will spend the season deciding which of those it wants him to be.
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.
- 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.
“2:25 a night shorthanded is the 98th percentile among the league forwards”
“a median shot distance of 17 feet, the 4th percentile — the closest shot chart of any forward on this roster”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 816 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.1%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 45%
- 15th 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: 29 for, 43 against. Expected: 30.9 and 36.1.
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 — 54 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 34th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.28 a game
- Distance
- 2.07 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.9 mph
- 54th 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 84.1
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 · 816 minutes at five-on-five
- Sam Carrick27%
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
- ANA took 48.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.1% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 816 minutes at five-on-five — 41st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cam Fowler | 45.8% | 46.4% | 51.7% |
| Isac Lundestrom | 42.2% | 48.5% | 44.3% |
| Kevin Shattenkirk | 44.0% | 47.2% | 47.3% |
45.8% together, 46.4% for him apart and 51.7% for Fowler apart. Fowler was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
146 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.