This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jake Middleton
Minnesota Wild Defense
A seventh-round pick playing 18:41 a night, with the 18th-most blocks and the 14th-most penalties taken of 202 defencemen.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | SJS | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 9:56 |
| 2019-20 | SJS | 10 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -2 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 10:46 |
| 2020-21 | SJS | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 8:44 |
| 2021-22 | SJS/MIN | 66 | 4 | 10 | 14 | +10 | 82 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 5.5 | 18:41 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 80 | 4 | 13 | 17 | +5 | 95 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 4.8 | 17:15 |
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 10 assists in sixty-six games at 18:41 a night, plus-10, eighty-two penalty minutes, split between San Jose and Minnesota. Two hundred and tenth overall in 2014, and 80 NHL games at 26.
The Finesse Game
There is not much. 0.65 even-strength points per 60 is the 17th percentile and 3.55 shots per 60 the 26th. Forty-eight-foot median, eleven per cent from the slot.
0.92 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd percentile among defencemen against 1.31 takeaways at the 80th. That is a genuinely good possession-safety line for a third-pair man and the most transferable thing in his file.
50.6 per cent of the expected goals is the 54th percentile and 46.3 per cent of the attempts the 19th — the gap between those says he was on for fewer attempts but not worse ones. 40.7 per cent offensive-zone time, the 20th percentile, is a genuine mitigation: he started in his own end.
His season spans two clubs, so most of his pair figures belong to San Jose and are not this club’s to read.
The Physical Game
6.03 blocks per 60 is the 18th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen. 5.74 hits per 60 is the 73rd percentile at 6-3 and 219.
0.83 penalties drawn per 60 is the 12th-most of 202 — unusually high for a defenceman — but 1.27 penalties taken per 60 is the 14th-most of 202 defencemen and eighty-two penalty minutes came out of sixty-six games. The net is the 22nd percentile.
The Intangibles
22.0 mph is the 54th percentile, 1.1 bursts per 60 the 34th, 8.42 miles per 60 the 46th. Middle of the distribution on every reading.
He is 26 and arrived mid-season into a defence corps that already had four men ahead of him. A seventh-round pick blocking shots at the 91st percentile in eighteen minutes a night is a real NHL player and an entirely replaceable one, and the penalty ledger is the thing that would move him in either direction.
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.
“6.03 blocks per 60 is the 18th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen.”
“1.27 penalties taken per 60 is the 14th-most of 202 defencemen and eighty-two penalty minutes came out of sixty-six games.”
“0.92 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd percentile among defencemen against 1.31 takeaways at the 80th.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,090 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.3%
- 24th 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: 46 for, 41 against. Expected: 43.5 and 42.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 34 points above where the report does. 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 — 55 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 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.33 a game
- Distance
- 2.62 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.3 mph
- 44th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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 with SJS · 752 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
- MIN took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 3.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,090 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Karlsson | 53.9% | 47.7% | 49.7% |
| Timo Meier | 56.4% | 48.4% | 53.8% |
| Logan Couture | 53.7% | 49.5% | 50.4% |
53.9% together, 47.7% for him apart and 49.7% for Karlsson apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
92 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.