This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jackson LaCombe
Anaheim Ducks Defense
Nineteen minutes a night in a first full season, and a minus-24 to show for it.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | ANA | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 18:29 |
| 2023-24 | ANA | 71 | 2 | 15 | 17 | -24 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 55 | 3.6 | 19:23 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 73 | 2 | 15 | 17 | -25 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 56 | 3.6 | 19:22 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
2 goals and 15 assists in 71 games — 17 points at 19:23 a night, minus-24, on 55 shots with 24 penalty minutes. His first full NHL season, at 23.
45.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,130 minutes, the 22nd percentile. His ice went 31-51 against an expectation of 38.73-47.03 — seven goals of scoring missing and five fewer conceded than the chances predicted.
The Finesse Game
55 attempts at a median of 41 feet, with 52 per cent from beyond 40 and 23 per cent from inside 20, converting at 3.6 per cent. There is no shot here to speak of.
The skating is good and it is what the job is built on — he retrieves under pressure and turns up ice in one motion, and he will carry the puck out of his own zone rather than ringing it around. The fifteen assists are the second pass more often than the first.
The decision-making is a year behind the feet. He holds the puck a beat too long at the offensive line and gives it back.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 208 and the frame is there without the strength yet. He blocks shots and he will go to the front of his own net, and he loses more of those battles than he wins against a 220-pound forward.
24 penalty minutes in 71 games is clean. He does not agitate and he does not answer a cross-check.
The Intangibles
Thirty-ninth overall in 2019, four years at Minnesota, and a man who was 23 before he played a full NHL season — which on most clubs would have meant another year in the American league and on this one meant nineteen minutes a night.
The minus-24 is the roster. What is worth watching is that his ice conceded five fewer goals than the chances against it predicted, which for a defenceman learning the position on a bad team is the encouraging half.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
24.1% of his attempts in the slot, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“**The skating is good and it is what the job is built on** — he retrieves under pressure and turns up ice in one motion, and he will carry the puck out of his own zone rather than ringing it around.”
“**He blocks shots and he will go to the front of his own net**, and he loses more of those battles than he wins against a 220-pound forward.”
“**He blocks shots and he will go to the front of his own net**, and he loses more of those battles than he wins against a 220-pound forward.”
“He does not agitate and he does not answer a cross-check.”
“He does not agitate and he does not answer a cross-check.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,130 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.2%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.6%
- 15th 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: 31 for, 51 against. Expected: 38.7 and 47.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 652 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.55 a game
- Distance
- 2.66 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.1 mph
- 52nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 1130 minutes at five-on-five
- Cam Fowler37%
- Radko Gudas31%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.2% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,130 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cam Fowler | 39.0% | 48.8% | 46.8% |
| Radko Gudas | 48.4% | 43.7% | 48.3% |
| Frank Vatrano | 41.9% | 46.5% | 44.5% |
39.0% together, 48.8% for him apart and 46.8% for Fowler 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
83 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 23% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 52% from beyond forty.