This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jackson LaCombe
Anaheim Ducks Defense
14 goals and 43 points at 24, on the best chance share of any defenceman here — which is still the 35th percentile.
| 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 | ANA | 75 | 14 | 29 | 43 | 0 | 28 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 134 | 10.4 | 22:18 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 148 | 16 | 44 | 60 | -25 | 52 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 190 | 8.4 | 20:51 |
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
14 goals and 29 assists in 75 games for 43 points, even, on 22:18 a night — the heaviest workload on the club and a career high by 25 points.
49.3 per cent at five-on-five, the 46th percentile, which is the best figure on this blue line and a reminder of what the rest of it looks like. 134 shots from a median of 45 feet with 22 per cent inside 20 — an unusually aggressive shot chart for a defenceman.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the reason for all of it. He leaves his own zone with the puck rather than passing it away, and he joins the rush as a genuine fourth attacker rather than as a trailer — 14 goals from a defenceman is not a point-shot total, it is a man arriving in the slot.
The passing is quick and mostly right. What is still developing is the read on when not to go, and on a club that conceded 263 goals it is difficult to separate his errors from the general condition.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 208, and he defends with feet and reach rather than weight. He is not moved off pucks easily but he does not clear a crease, and against a heavy forecheck he escapes rather than absorbs.
28 penalty minutes over 75 games. The durability has been good since he arrived.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick, four years at Minnesota, and a slow arrival that has turned into the club’s best defenceman almost overnight.
The projection is a genuine top-pair defenceman on a good team, and the caution is that everything measured about him last season happened in front of the worst chance-suppression in the league. 48.4 per cent in that environment is encouraging; nobody yet knows what it is worth in a normal one.
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
24.7% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
5 of 105 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.8%, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
49.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 42.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.9, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“He leaves his own zone with the puck rather than passing it away, and he joins the rush as a genuine fourth attacker rather than as a trailer”
“The passing is quick and mostly right.”
“he defends with feet and reach rather than weight”
“He is not moved off pucks easily”
“he does not clear a crease”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,226 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.3%
- 47th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.3%
- 46th 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: 49 for, 48 against. Expected: 51.9 and 53.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 19 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2024-25 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.27 a game
- Distance
- 3.24 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.0 mph
- 68th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1226 minutes at five-on-five
- Radko Gudas74%
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
- ANA took 44.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.3% — 4.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,226 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radko Gudas | 47.5% | 54.3% | 43.8% |
| Troy Terry | 55.1% | 45.8% | 44.7% |
| Frank Vatrano | 53.4% | 46.8% | 45.4% |
47.5% together, 54.3% for him apart and 43.8% for Gudas apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Gudas behind.
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
186 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 22% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 56% from beyond forty.