Ian Mitchell

The first percentile in five-on-five share, on the worst club in the Western Conference.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2020-21	CHI	39	3	4	7	-10	14	0	0	0	23	13.0	15:02
2021-22	CHI	8	0	1	1	-3	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	11:56
2022-23	CHI	35	1	7	8	-8	8	0	0	0	25	4.0	15:50
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	82	4	12	16	-21	22	0	0	0	50	8.0	15:04

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 7 assists in 35 games for Chicago — 8 points at 15:50 a night, minus-8, on 25 shots and 8 penalty minutes.

36.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 512 minutes — the 1st percentile in the league. Chicago was the worst possession club in hockey and he was on its third pair, so the number is close to uninterpretable as a description of him; his ice went 18-26 against an expectation of 17.41-29.86, which is four fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

25 attempts at a median of 47 feet, none of them from inside 20, converting at 4 per cent. 16 points in 82 career games.

He was drafted and signed as a puck-moving defenceman and the puck-moving is the only part that has shown up. The first pass is quick and mostly correct; there is nothing beyond it.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 198, and that is the problem — he is not big enough to defend the net front and there is no evidence yet that he is quick enough to defend the rush instead. 8 penalty minutes in 35 games.

The skating measures as ordinary: 22.3 mph at the 50th percentile. For a defenceman this size that is not enough on its own, and the thing that would make it enough — the lateral quickness — is exactly what the tracking does not report. The record so far suggests it is not there; that is a reading of the results rather than of the feet.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seventh overall in 2017, out of Denver, and he was an NCAA champion and a highly regarded prospect before three seasons of not establishing himself in Chicago.

He is 24 and arrives in Boston on a one-year deal as organisational depth. Eighty-two NHL games in three seasons for a second-round pick is not a promising trajectory, and this is the season where the label changes from prospect to minor-leaguer if nothing moves.

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.

sheltered· is started in the attacking end
58% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is quick and mostly correct; there is nothing beyond it.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“he is not big enough to defend the net front and there is no evidence yet that he is quick enough to defend the rush instead”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 512 minutes

Expected goals: 36.8%; 1st pct
Shot attempts: 40.5%; 3rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 18 for, 26 against. Expected: 17.4 and 29.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

8th

Numbers

1st

The two rank him within 7 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 52 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 with CHI · 512 minutes at five-on-five

Caleb Jonesnow COL43%
Jack Johnsonnow COL14%
Nikita Zaitsev10%

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: CHI took 42.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 36.8% — 5.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 512 minutes at five-on-five — 17th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Caleb Jones	40.1%	34.5%	46.7%
Andreas Athanasiou	32.9%	38.5%	44.5%
Philipp Kurashev	31.0%	38.6%	43.1%

40.1% together, 34.5% for him apart and 46.7% for Jones apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Jones and did not follow 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

33 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.