This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Dylan DeMelo
Winnipeg Jets Defense
One goal in seventy-six games, the 19th-slowest top speed of 192 defencemen, and the 34th-best chance share of 202.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | SJS | 45 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 4.8 | 13:37 |
| 2016-17 | SJS | 25 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +2 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 3.1 | 15:54 |
| 2017-18 | SJS | 63 | 0 | 20 | 20 | -1 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 0.0 | 14:12 |
| 2018-19 | OTT | 77 | 4 | 18 | 22 | -1 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 109 | 3.7 | 19:17 |
| 2019-20 | OTT/WPG | 59 | 0 | 10 | 10 | +4 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 74 | 0.0 | 20:08 |
| 2020-21 | WPG | 52 | 0 | 9 | 9 | +10 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 0.0 | 16:58 |
| 2021-22 | WPG | 76 | 1 | 12 | 13 | +10 | 28 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 78 | 1.3 | 18:30 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 397 | 8 | 78 | 86 | +24 | 179 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 446 | 1.8 | 17:18 |
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
76 games, 1 goal and 12 assists at 18:30 a night, plus-10, twenty-eight penalty minutes, 78 shots, one short-handed goal. Hundred-and-seventy-ninth overall in 2011 by San Jose — the sixth round — seven seasons, 397 games, 86 points.
The Finesse Game
One goal from seventy-eight shots is 1.3 per cent, the 17th-lowest of the 202 defencemen who played forty games — and eight goals in 397 career games is the same fact in longer form.
3.33 shots per 60 is the 21st percentile from a 55-foot median, the 95th percentile, with four per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet.
0.55 even-strength points per 60 is the 19th-lowest of the 202, and none of his thirteen points came on the power play, off one second a night with the man advantage.
Everything about the offensive file is a zero, and it is worth being blunt about that before the next paragraph.
54.3 per cent of the expected goals is the 34th-best of all 202 defencemen, out of 50.8 per cent offensive-zone starts and 18:30 a night.
51.1 per cent of the attempts is the 63rd percentile, so the chance share is better than the volume share — his minutes give up shots and not the dangerous ones.
His ice went 41-39 against an expectation of 51.45-43.3 — ten short in front and four fewer against. The fourth Winnipeg skater in this chapter to be badly short at the attacking end.
With Josh Morrissey he took 56.2 per cent of the attempts across 1,293 and 50.8 per cent apart from him. The pair is the best thing either man did.
The Physical Game
2:37 a night short-handed is the 85th percentile among defencemen, with 4.61 blocks per 60 and a short-handed goal.
4.82 hits per 60 is the 60th percentile at 6-1 and 194 pounds, and twenty-eight penalty minutes came out of seventy-six games.
The Intangibles
21.0 mph is the 19th-slowest top speed of the 192 tracked defencemen, with 0.555 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 — the 29th-fewest — and 8.07 miles per 60, the 27th-lowest.
All three tracking measurements are in the bottom fifth of the position. This is one of the least mobile defencemen in the league by every figure the chips produce, and he took the 34th-best chance share of 202 anyway.
He is 29, a sixth-round pick, with eighty-six points in 397 games. A slow, pointless, positionally excellent second-pair defenceman who kills penalties is a real and undervalued thing. The one goal and the ten-goal shortfall in front are why nobody notices.
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
54.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.5% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.8, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“2:37 a night short-handed is the 85th percentile among defencemen, with 4.61 blocks per 60 and a short-handed goal.”
“54.3 per cent of the expected goals is the 34th-best of all 202 defencemen, out of 50.8 per cent offensive-zone starts and 18:30 a night.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,188 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.3%
- 83rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.1%
- 66th 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: 41 for, 39 against. Expected: 51.5 and 43.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 30 points above where the report does. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 30th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.17 a game
- Distance
- 2.49 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.8 mph
- 59th 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 · 1188 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
- WPG took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.3% — 4.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,188 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Morrissey | 56.2% | 50.8% | 52.9% |
| Pierre-Luc Dubois | 56.9% | 53.2% | 51.5% |
| Kyle Connor | 53.1% | 54.8% | 48.7% |
56.2% together, 50.8% for him apart and 52.9% for Morrissey 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
96 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.