Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

74

Jaccob Slavin

Carolina Hurricanes Defense

Eight penalty minutes in 76 games at twenty-two minutes a night.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16CAR6321820+18000842.420:59
2016-17CAR8252934+2312010995.123:26
2017-18CAR8282230+1101011545.222:35
2018-19CAR82823310185111465.523:02
2019-20CAR6863036+30100031454.123:24
2020-21CAR5231215+2220001013.022:59
2021-22CAR7943842+35101001652.423:32
2022-23CAR7672027+1880011315.322:00
2023-24 so far
Career58443192235+1307872610254.222:47

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 20 assists in 76 games — 27 points at 22:00 a night, plus-18.

Eight penalty minutes. Four minor penalties across a full season of top-pair work against the other club’s best players. That is the report, and everything else is commentary on how a man does that.

59.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,399 minutes, the 98th percentile. His ice went 59-49 against an expectation of 69.08-46.53 — ten goals short at the offensive end, which is where Carolina lost its season.

The Finesse Game

131 attempts at a median of 52 feet, 69 per cent from beyond forty. Four goals on 92 shots from out there, three on 36 from inside forty; 5.34 per cent overall against a career rate of 4.2 in 584 games. He is not a shooter and the club does not ask him to be.

The 20 assists at 22 minutes a night are modest for the minutes, and they are modest because his value is at the other end. A fourth-round pick at 120th overall in 2012 who became a first-pair defenceman is a scouting story, and none of the offensive numbers explain it.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 207, 22.2 mph at the 47th percentile and 2.93 miles a game at the 76th. Ordinary tracking numbers on a man whose defending is anything but.

He takes the puck instead of the man, and the eight penalty minutes are the proof rather than the claim — a defenceman playing these minutes against these opponents will foul someone unless he is arriving early enough not to need to. That is a statement about position and timing, and there is no measurement in this book that isolates it.

The Intangibles

Eight seasons, one club, and the quietest excellent player in the league. He does not shoot, does not hit, does not take penalties and does not get scored on.

Carolina’s system asks its defencemen to hold a line and move the puck, and he is the man it was designed around.

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

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.

  • disciplined· stays out of the box

    0.11 penalty minutes a game over 76, 1st percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

  • sheltered· is started in the attacking end

    59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 91st percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He takes the puck instead of the man”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,399 minutes

Expected goals
59.8%
98th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
61%
99th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 49 against. Expected: 69.1 and 46.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
98th

The numbers rank him 22 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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 · 1399 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
CAR took 58.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 59.8% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,399 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brent Burns59.8%59.5%60.7%
Martin Necas55.0%61.8%56.1%
Sebastian Aho60.5%59.4%58.3%

59.8% together, 59.5% for him apart and 60.7% for Burns apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

195 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.