This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Dylan Samberg
Winnipeg Jets Defense
Six foot four, a 72 per cent wrist-shot share, and sixty-eight attempts in sixty-three games.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | WPG | 15 | 0 | 5 | 5 | +3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0.0 | 14:51 |
| 2022-23 | WPG | 63 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +10 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 4.1 | 14:56 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 78 | 2 | 11 | 13 | +13 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 63 | 3.2 | 14:55 |
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
2 goals and 6 assists in 63 games — 8 points — at 14:56 a night, in his first full season. Plus-10, 49 shots at 4.1 per cent, 25 penalty minutes.
54.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 81st percentile — the best of any defenceman on this roster — across 819 minutes, with his ice at 29-24 against an expectation of 34.61-28.99. Six fewer goals scored than the chances called for and five fewer allowed.
He started 50.5 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 48th percentile: 202 attacking draws against 198 defensive ones. Dead even, on a third pair, and an 81st-percentile chance share out of it.
That is a very good rookie season and eight points is what the box score kept.
The Finesse Game
49 shots at a median of 52 feet, with 73 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 3 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty feet: 38 shots on goal and two goals — 5.26 per cent, above the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: seven shots and none. Inside twenty: two shots and none. Forty-seven shots on goal is not a sample.
68 tracked attempts in 63 games — barely one a game — with 49 of them wrist shots, a 72.1 per cent share, and 13 slap. His shot is measured at 91.9 mph, the 59th percentile.
Two goals in a season and two in 78 career games. There is no offence here and the club has not asked for any.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 216 pounds, with 25 penalty minutes in 63 games and 29 in 78 career games.
Top speed 21.5 mph at the 15th percentile, 0.2 bursts above twenty a game at the 7th, 2.11 miles a game at the 20th. Slow on every measure, and fifteen minutes a night is part of the third figure.
He clears the front of his net and he is extremely difficult to move out of it, which at 6-4 and 216 pounds is the reason a twenty-three-year-old was trusted with sixty-three games.
He blocks shots and takes them off the body, and the 81st-percentile chance share is what a defenceman who is always in the lane produces.
The feet are the ceiling. He is beaten wide, and on a third pair against fourth lines that costs less than it will if he is ever moved up.
The Intangibles
Forty-third overall in 2017, the second round, two seasons, 78 games, 13 points, all of them here.
Two goals and eleven assists, and a plus-13 in 78 games.
He is twenty-four, and last season was his first full one.
A second-round defenceman who arrives at twenty-three and holds an 81st-percentile chance share out of even starts has done everything a club could ask of a first full season. What he cannot do is skate, and that is the number that decides whether this is a third pair or a second one.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
84.6% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He clears the front of his net and he is extremely difficult to move out of it, which at 6-4 and 216 pounds is the reason a twenty-three-year-old was trusted with sixty-three games.”
“He blocks shots and takes them off the body, and the 81st-percentile chance share is what a defenceman who is always in the lane produces.”
“He is beaten wide, and on a third pair against fourth lines that costs less than it will if he is ever moved up.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 819 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.4%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.1%
- 86th 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, 24 against. Expected: 34.6 and 29.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 26 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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 · 63 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 48th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.24 a game
- Distance
- 2.11 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.9 mph
- 52nd 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 · 819 minutes at five-on-five
- Nate Schmidt40%
- Dylan DeMelo24%
- Neal Pionk11%
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
- WPG took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.4% — 2.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 819 minutes at five-on-five — 41st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nate Schmidt | 56.1% | 53.0% | 50.6% |
| Mark Scheifele | 50.2% | 56.6% | 50.3% |
| Kyle Connor | 54.8% | 54.2% | 51.0% |
56.1% together, 53.0% for him apart and 50.6% for Schmidt 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
65 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 56 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 85% from beyond forty.