This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jake McCabe

Plus-23 and the 76th percentile of chances, from the defenceman this club uses against everybody's best line.

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	CHI/TOR	76	3	22	25	+19	56	0	0	1	96	3.1	19:29
2023-24	TOR	73	8	20	28	+20	56	1	0	3	73	11.0	20:39
2024-25	TOR	66	2	21	23	+23	40	0	0	0	74	2.7	21:31
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	643	35	140	175	+7	388	3	2	6	674	5.2	19:48

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

2 goals and 21 assists in 66 games — 23 points at 21:31 a night, plus-23, with 40 penalty minutes.

52.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 76th percentile. His ice went 59-41 against an expectation of 48.22-43.64 — seven goals better than expected for and three fewer against, against the hardest matchups the club faced.

The Finesse Game

74 attempts in 66 games at a median of 52 feet with 66 per cent from beyond 40, and 2 goals. There is no shot.

21 assists is a career-typical number and it comes from the first pass, which is quick and simple. He does not carry the puck and the club does not want him to.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 210 and among the hardest-hitting defencemen in the league. He finishes every check, he clears the front of his own net by force, and he blocks shots.

40 penalty minutes in 66 games is a moderate rate for a player who plays this way. He plays with a genuine edge and he does not back out of anything.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2012 and 643 games and 175 points across three organisations, most of it in Buffalo on hockey teams that lost a great deal.

He is 32 and was acquired in 2023 in a trade that also brought Sam Lafferty. He signed a five-year extension in 2025 and he is the first defenceman over the boards against a first line.

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.

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.

punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“**6-1 and 210 and among the hardest-hitting defencemen in the league.** He finishes every check, he clears the front of his own net by force, and he blocks shots.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He finishes every check, he clears the front of his own net by force, and he blocks shots.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He finishes every check, he clears the front of his own net by force, and he blocks shots.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“He plays with a genuine edge and he does not back out of anything.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not carry the puck and the club does not want him to.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,180 minutes

Expected goals: 52.5%; 74th pct
Shot attempts: 48.8%; 41st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 41 against. Expected: 48.2 and 43.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

74th

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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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 · 66 games

Top speed: 23.7 mph; 99th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.52 a game
Distance: 3.00 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.5 mph; 26th 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

2024-25 · 1180 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, 2024-25

The club: TOR took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.5% — 2.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,180 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Chris Tanev	54.1%	51.0%	53.5%
Mitchell Marner	52.5%	52.5%	55.4%
Matthew Knies	54.5%	51.5%	52.8%

54.1% together, 51.0% for him apart and 53.5% for Tanev apart. He was worse away from Tanev, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Tanev 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

95 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 61 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.