This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jake Guentzel

Forty goals and the 27th-best even-strength point rate of 393 forwards, on 1,878 attempts beside Sidney Crosby.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	PIT	40	16	17	33	+7	10	1	0	0	81	19.8	15:53
2017-18	PIT	82	22	26	48	-9	42	7	0	1	171	12.9	16:29
2018-19	PIT	82	40	36	76	+13	26	6	1	4	227	17.6	19:21
2019-20	PIT	39	20	23	43	+11	14	6	0	4	127	15.8	20:38
2020-21	PIT	56	23	34	57	+7	28	6	0	7	141	16.3	20:16
2021-22	PIT	76	40	44	84	+13	44	7	0	7	264	15.2	20:06
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	375	161	180	341	+42	164	33	1	23	1011	15.9	18:47

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

76 games, 40 goals and 44 assists at 20:06 a night, plus-13, forty-four penalty minutes, 264 shots. Seven of the forty came on the power play. Seventy-seventh overall in 2013 — the third round — six seasons, 375 games, 341 points.

The Finesse Game

2.97 even-strength points per 60 is the 27th-best of the 393 forwards who played forty games and 10.37 shots per 60 is the 33rd-most. Both are top-ten-per-cent rates and the second is the rarer one for a 176-pound winger.

Sixty-three per cent of his attempts came from the slot at a 20-foot median, the 88th percentile among forwards, at 5-11 and 176 pounds.

15.2 per cent shooting is the 82nd percentile and 0.90 giveaways per 60 the 11th — he takes more shots than almost anyone and loses the puck less than almost anyone.

53.4 per cent of the expected goals and 53.3 per cent of the attempts, out of 62.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 28th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

And the pair file has almost nothing to compare against. He played 1,878 five-on-five attempts with Sidney Crosby and 487 without him, and in those 487 he took 48.0 per cent of the expected goals against 54.8 alongside. Crosby apart from Guentzel has an even smaller sample, 269 attempts, at 55.8.

Neither man has a readable season away from the other and that is the honest state of the evidence.

The Physical Game

2.83 hits per 60 is the 34th percentile and 1.49 blocks the 40th at 176 pounds — the lightest forward on this roster.

1.14 penalties drawn per 60 is the 82nd percentile against 0.82 taken, and the net at the 77th is a genuine plus.

The Intangibles

23.2 mph is the 88th percentile and 8.9 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 82nd, on 9.80 miles per 60 at the 62nd. Quick rather than tireless, and the 86.7 mph shot is only the 26th percentile.

A forty-goal scorer with the 26th-percentile shot speed is a placement story, and the 20-foot median says where.

He is 28 with 161 goals in 375 games. The volume, the geography and the giveaway rate are three durable things. The 62.4 per cent zone starts and the 1,878 attempts beside Crosby are the two the record cannot separate from him.

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.

workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:33 a game at five-on-five, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Sixty-three per cent of his attempts came from the slot at a 20-foot median, the 88th percentile among forwards, at 5-11 and 176 pounds.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,182 minutes

Expected goals: 53.4%; 79th pct
Shot attempts: 53.3%; 80th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 62 for, 45 against. Expected: 61.0 and 53.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

96th

Numbers

79th

The two rank him within 17 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 649 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, 2021-22 · 76 games

Top speed: 23.2 mph; 92nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.99 a game
Distance: 3.28 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.7 mph; 47th pct

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

2021-22 · 1182 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, 2021-22

The club: PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.4% — 0.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,182 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sidney Crosby	54.8%	48.0%	55.8%
Kris Letang	53.2%	53.6%	50.5%
Bryan Rust	50.0%	57.2%	52.9%

54.8% together, 48.0% for him apart and 55.8% for Crosby apart. He was worse away from Crosby, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Crosby did.

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

355 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 40 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.