Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

90

J.J. Moser

Arizona Coyotes Defense

Twenty-one minutes a night at twenty-three, on a second-round pick nobody else wanted.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22ARI4341115-10161014010.018:42
2022-23ARI8272431-1235301937.521:03
2023-24 so far
Career125113546-22514021338.320:14

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

7 goals and 24 assists in 82 games — 31 points at 21:03 a night, minus-12, with 3 power-play goals on 93 shots and 35 penalty minutes.

45.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,287 minutes, the 21st percentile, and his ice went 48-59 against an expectation of 44.18-53.7 — five more conceded than the chances predicted.

Twenty-one minutes a night in a second full season, at twenty-three, on the club’s top pair.

The Finesse Game

93 attempts at a median of 45 feet, 67 per cent from beyond 40 and 7 per cent from inside 20, converting at 7.53 per cent.

The value is in moving the puck rather than shooting it — 24 assists and 35 in 125 career games. He takes the puck under pressure and leaves the zone with it on his stick, and the first pass is early and to the right side.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 183, which is light, and he does not defend with contact — 35 penalty minutes in 82 games. He is beaten by weight in front of his own net and he has to be paired with somebody who is not.

The skating is the reason the club trusts him: 22.3 mph at the 51st percentile and 2.93 miles a game at the 76th, which on a top pair means he is skating the puck out rather than chipping it.

The Intangibles

Sixtieth overall in 2021, out of the Swiss league at twenty-one, which is both late and a place NHL clubs rarely look.

He is 23 with 125 games already. On a rebuilding club the interesting question is never the ceiling but the floor, and a second-round pick playing 21 minutes at 23 has one that is already useful — the club’s problem is that he is being asked to be a first-pair defenceman three years early because there is nobody above him.

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.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best

    38% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 8th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “He takes the puck under pressure and leaves the zone with it on his stick, and the first pass is early and to the right side.”

  • hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “He is beaten by weight in front of his own net and he has to be paired with somebody who is not.”

  • clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He is beaten by weight in front of his own net and he has to be paired with somebody who is not.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,287 minutes

Expected goals
45.1%
21st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.9%
12th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 59 against. Expected: 44.2 and 53.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
54th
Numbers
21st

The report ranks him 33 points above where the numbers do. 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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 · 1287 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, 2022-23

The club
ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.1% — 0.4 below the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,287 minutes at five-on-five — 89th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Patrik Nemeth42.2%47.3%39.3%
Lawson Crouse45.5%44.9%50.7%
Matias Maccelli43.7%45.7%53.3%

42.2% together, 47.3% for him apart and 39.3% for Nemeth apart. He was better away from Nemeth, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Nemeth.

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

123 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.