This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Henri Jokiharju
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Twenty-one minutes a night, three per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet, and thirteen points.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | CHI | 38 | 0 | 12 | 12 | -7 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 0.0 | 18:59 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 69 | 4 | 11 | 15 | -6 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 5.1 | 17:13 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 46 | 3 | 5 | 8 | -11 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 6.0 | 18:23 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 60 | 3 | 16 | 19 | -8 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 3.6 | 21:53 |
| 2022-23 | BUF | 60 | 3 | 10 | 13 | -12 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 3.8 | 21:01 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 273 | 13 | 54 | 67 | -44 | 102 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 352 | 3.7 | 19:31 |
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
3 goals and 10 assists in 60 games — 13 points at 21:01 a night, minus-12, on 79 shots and 30 penalty minutes.
48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,110 minutes, the 41st percentile. His ice went 54-65 against an expectation of 50.68-53.1 — twelve more goals conceded than the chances predicted, which is the club’s goaltending showing up in an individual’s file.
The Finesse Game
79 attempts at a median of 54 feet, 81 per cent from beyond 40 and 3 per cent from inside 20 — the most perimeter shot chart of any defenceman on the roster.
67 points in 273 career games. There is very little offence and the shot is not a threat despite measuring 94.8 mph, which is the recurring lesson of this edition about hard shots taken from 54 feet.
The passing is tidy and unambitious. He does not lose the puck and he does not create with it.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 205 and he defends with stick and position — 102 penalty minutes in 273 games.
He covers 3.06 miles a game at the 83rd percentile on a 21.6 mph top speed at the 16th, which is the third Buffalo defenceman in this club’s entry with that exact shape: always moving, never fast. Twenty-one minutes a night is more than the evidence supports, and it is a statement about what is behind him on the depth chart.
The Intangibles
Twenty-ninth overall in 2017 to Chicago, and he arrived in a trade for a second-round pick five years ago.
He is 24 with 273 games already. He is the sort of defenceman a good club has at number five and a bad one plays at number two, and Buffalo has been playing him at number two for four years.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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
82.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“The passing is tidy and unambitious. He does not lose the puck and he does not create with it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,110 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.8%
- 41st pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.6%
- 58th 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: 54 for, 65 against. Expected: 50.7 and 53.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1110 minutes at five-on-five
- Owen Power63%
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
- BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.8% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,110 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owen Power | 45.8% | 54.7% | 52.2% |
| Jeff Skinner | 51.7% | 47.4% | 52.8% |
| Tage Thompson | 50.5% | 48.1% | 51.1% |
45.8% together, 54.7% for him apart and 52.2% for Power 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
97 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.