Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

74

Jaccob Slavin

Carolina Hurricanes Defense

8 penalty minutes in 80 games while playing the hardest defensive assignments in the league.

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
2023-24CAR8163137+2180211514.020:56
2024-25CAR8062127+1680021105.521:34
2025-26 so far
Career74555244299+1679474912864.322:27

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

6 goals and 21 assists in 80 games for 27 points, plus-16, on 21:34 a night — the heaviest workload on the blue line.

55.2 per cent at five-on-five, the 91st percentile, over 1,359 minutes. His on-ice goals were 60-62 against an expected 63-51, which is 11 goals of goaltending disappearing behind the best defensive defenceman in the league.

8 penalty minutes across 80 games. That is the number.

The Finesse Game

The stick is the skill and it is the best in hockey. He takes pucks off attackers without contact, which is why the penalty total is what it is, and he does it at the exact moment a play is about to become dangerous.

The first pass is quick and accurate and the skating is good enough to recover from anything. 110 shots and 6 goals — there is no offensive game here beyond keeping pucks alive at the line, and 21 assists is a fair return for a man whose job is the other end.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 207, and he defends almost entirely without body contact. He boxes out in front of his own net, he does not hit, and he is essentially never out of position badly enough to need to.

8 penalty minutes in 80 games, in 1,359 five-on-five minutes against the best forwards in the league, is one of the more remarkable statistical facts in this edition.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick, ten seasons in one organisation, and a career of being the answer to “who is the best defensive defenceman alive” among people who watch closely and nobody else.

At 31 there is no visible decline. The one thing his record lacks is a Cup, and the club has now been eliminated in the conference final three times in six years.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,359 minutes

Expected goals
55.2%
92nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
57.9%
96th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 60 for, 62 against. Expected: 63.0 and 51.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
87th
Numbers
92nd

The two rank him within 5 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 80 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

2024-25 · 1359 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, 2024-25

The club
CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.2% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,359 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brent Burns55.5%53.3%40.1%
Jordan Martinook56.6%54.4%54.9%
Jordan Staal54.9%55.4%55.5%

55.5% together, 53.3% for him apart and 40.1% for Burns apart. Burns was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Burns than for 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

204 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.