Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

25

Jacob Bernard-Docker

Ottawa Senators Defense

Ninety per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet, on the 17th percentile of chances.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21OTT5000+2000060.013:40
2021-22OTT8011+1400060.014:46
2022-23OTT19011-211000220.016:01
2023-24OTT7241014-725000517.815:42
2024-25 so far
Career10441216-640000854.715:35

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

72 games, 4 goals and 10 assists for 14 points, 25 penalty minutes, 15:42 a night and minus-7. He took 44.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,021 minutes, the 17th percentile and the second-worst share on the club, and his ice went 40-50 against an expectation of 34.68-43.46.

Five goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and seven more conceded than they called for. Seventy-two games and 14 points are both career highs, on the wrong side of nearly everything.

The Finesse Game

77 attempts at a median of 57 feet with 90 per cent of them from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty, 51 of those on goal, converted at 7.8 per cent against a career 4.71 across 85 shots.

Ninety per cent from beyond forty feet is the most perimeter-bound shot chart on this blue line. 12 career assists in 104 games and no power-play goal in four seasons; the puck leaves his stick to the nearest available option and nothing more ambitious than that.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 196 and took 25 penalty minutes.

40 career penalty minutes in 104 games. He plays a closing, boxing-out game in front of his own net and gets a stick into lanes rather than a body into forwards; against the top six that has not been enough, which is what the 17th percentile says.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2018, four seasons, 16 points in 104 games and a career minus-6.

A first-round pick who reached seventy games for the first time at 23 and did it on the worst pair on the club. There is a third-pair defenceman here and the evidence for anything beyond that is still thin.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,021 minutes

Expected goals
44.4%
18th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.5%
31st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 50 against. Expected: 34.7 and 43.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
4th
Numbers
18th

The two rank him within 14 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 437 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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

2023-24 · 1021 minutes at five-on-five

  • Jakob Chychrunnow WSH42%
  • Erik Brannstromnow VAN27%

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
OTT took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.4% — 4.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,021 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jakob Chychrun41.0%47.1%50.0%
Drake Batherson44.6%44.3%49.8%
Brady Tkachuk51.1%41.5%56.3%

41.0% together, 47.1% for him apart and 50.0% for Chychrun 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

77 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 57 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 90% from beyond forty.