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

Jake McCabe

Forty-two point eight per cent of the shot attempts, the 3rd percentile, and blocks at the 96th.

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

2013-14	BUF	7	0	1	1	-3	15	0	0	0	1	0.0	15:13
2014-15	BUF	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	11:08
2015-16	BUF	77	4	10	14	+6	51	0	0	0	62	6.5	19:07
2016-17	BUF	76	3	17	20	-7	26	1	0	1	79	3.8	20:42
2017-18	BUF	53	3	9	12	-11	26	1	0	0	53	5.7	19:30
2018-19	BUF	59	4	10	14	-4	35	0	1	0	64	6.3	18:57
2019-20	BUF	66	3	10	13	-11	41	0	1	1	75	4.0	18:32
2020-21	BUF	13	1	2	3	+2	9	0	0	0	15	6.7	19:11
2021-22	CHI	75	4	18	22	-27	33	0	0	0	80	5.0	20:18
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	428	22	77	99	-55	236	2	2	2	431	5.1	19:26

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

4 goals and 18 assists in 75 games — 22 points at 20:18 a night, minus-27, with 33 penalty minutes.

43.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,300 minutes, the 6th percentile among defencemen, and 42.8 per cent of the shot attempts, the 3rd. His ice went 48-70 against an expectation of 43.06-56.47 — five more goals for than the chances promised and fourteen more against.

2:32 a night shorthanded is the 81st percentile among defencemen and he took the club’s hardest defensive assignment.

The Finesse Game

3.15 shots per 60 is the 15th percentile among defencemen and 4 goals in 75 games. 1.00 even-strength points per 60 is the 59th percentile and none of his points came on the power play.

2.36 giveaways per 60 is the 83rd percentile and counts against him. He is not a puck-mover and the club had nobody else to give the minutes to.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 210, 6.58 blocks per 60 is the 96th percentile among defencemen — the 8th-highest of the 202 qualified — and 6.54 hits is the 80th. This is the whole of the report and it is a real job.

0.59 penalties taken per 60 is the 46th percentile — 33 penalty minutes in 75 games, which for a defenceman who plays this way is restrained.

22.4 mph is the 73rd percentile among defencemen. He is not slow; he is beaten by the situation rather than by the skating.

The Intangibles

Forty-fourth overall in 2012 by Buffalo, and 428 NHL games at 28 with a career minus-55.

Philipp Kurashev took 35.4 per cent of the chances with McCabe on the ice and 48.9 without him, across 479 attempts together and 824 apart. That is a thirteen-point gap. What it cannot separate is a defenceman dragging a line down from a defenceman being sent out with it against the other side’s best, and Chicago sent him out against the other side’s best all season.

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
38% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 4th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“6.58 blocks per 60 is the 96th percentile among defencemen — the 8th-highest of the 202 qualified”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,300 minutes

Expected goals: 43.3%; 11th pct
Shot attempts: 42.8%; 6th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 70 against. Expected: 43.1 and 56.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

33rd

Numbers

11th

The report ranks him 22 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 57 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 · 75 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 82nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.60 a game
Distance: 2.85 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.5 mph; 46th 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 · 1300 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: CHI took 45.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.3% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,300 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Connor Murphy	40.5%	44.4%	46.5%
Kirby Dach	41.3%	44.0%	48.1%
Patrick Kane	42.2%	43.7%	48.8%

40.5% together, 44.4% for him apart and 46.5% for Murphy 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

110 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 54 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.