This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Givani Smith
San Jose Sharks Right Wing
Seventy-two penalty minutes in thirty-six games at seven minutes a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | DET | 21 | 2 | 1 | 3 | -2 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 9.1 | 9:41 |
| 2020-21 | DET | 16 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -5 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 5.0 | 10:35 |
| 2021-22 | DET | 46 | 4 | 3 | 7 | -6 | 108 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 8.0 | 8:28 |
| 2022-23 | DET/FLA | 36 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -2 | 72 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3.3 | 7:00 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 119 | 8 | 10 | 18 | -15 | 210 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 122 | 6.6 | 8:31 |
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
1 goal and 3 assists in 36 games — 4 points — at 7:00 a night between Detroit and Florida. Minus-2, 30 shots at 3.3 per cent, 72 penalty minutes.
7:00 a night is the lowest ice time in this chapter by more than two minutes, and 72 penalty minutes in that ice time is a rate almost nobody in this book matches.
45.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 251 minutes, the 19th percentile, with his ice at 8-10 against an expectation of 9.35-11.14.
He started 50.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 51st percentile.
Two hundred and fifty-one minutes is a week of a regular’s season.
The Finesse Game
30 shots at a median of 25 feet. Inside twenty feet: ten shots on goal and one goal. From twenty to forty: eleven shots and none. Beyond forty: five shots and none.
Eight goals in 119 career games at 6.6 per cent. There is no scoring record here and there is not going to be one.
43 tracked attempts is the smallest count of any skater in this chapter, and 95.6 mph at the 82nd percentile is a hard shot he takes forty-three times a season.
The hands are the limitation. He does not make plays under pressure and the puck leaves him quickly, which at seven minutes a night is not what he is out there for.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 214 pounds, with 72 penalty minutes in 36 games and 210 in 119 career games — nearly two penalty minutes a game for a career.
1.14 miles a game is the lowest figure in this chapter and among the lowest in the edition, and at seven minutes a night that is arithmetic rather than a finding. Top speed 22.3 mph at the 52nd percentile and 0.5 bursts above twenty a game at the 25th.
He fights, and that is the job. A fourth-line winger who plays seven minutes and takes two penalty minutes a game is being dressed for one purpose and everybody in the building knows what it is.
He takes liberties, punishes people along the wall, and is on the ice for the shifts after somebody on his own bench has been run.
The Intangibles
Forty-sixth overall in 2016, the second round, four seasons, 119 games, 18 points across Detroit, Florida and San Jose.
A second-round pick who has become an enforcer is an unusual outcome and a rarer one every year: the role he plays is being written out of the league.
He is twenty-five, on a club that has nothing to protect and no reason not to dress him. What the file records is 210 penalty minutes, eight goals, and a set of skills that has one buyer at a time.
The 45.6 per cent chance share out of neutral starts is the only number worth watching, and 251 minutes is not enough of it to matter.
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.
“He fights, and that is the job.”
“He takes liberties, punishes people along the wall, and is on the ice for the shifts after somebody on his own bench has been run.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 251 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.6%
- 25th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.5%
- 57th 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: 8 for, 10 against. Expected: 9.3 and 11.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 36 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 58th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.50 a game
- Distance
- 1.14 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.6 mph
- 94th 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 84.9
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 with FLA · 231 minutes at five-on-five
- Ryan Lomberg36%
- Eric Staaloff the roster32%
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
- FLA took 53.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.6% — 8.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 251 minutes at five-on-five — 3rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colin White | 40.1% | 49.8% | 49.0% |
| Radko Gudas | 55.6% | 41.2% | 57.4% |
| Josh Mahura | 49.3% | 44.2% | 57.6% |
40.1% together, 49.8% for him apart and 49.0% for White apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
39 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.