This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jake Middleton
Minnesota Wild Defense
A two-hundred-and-tenth-overall pick San Jose gave fourteen games in three years, playing nineteen minutes a night on a playoff club.
| 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 | MIN | 79 | 3 | 12 | 15 | +15 | 72 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 3.8 | 19:02 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 159 | 7 | 25 | 32 | +20 | 167 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 162 | 4.3 | 18:08 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
3 goals and 12 assists in 79 games — 15 points — at 19:02 a night, with 72 penalty minutes. Plus-15, 79 shots.
47.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 36th percentile — the lowest of any Minnesota defenceman — with his ice at 46-42 against an expectation of 47.70-51.79. Ten goals better at the defensive end than the chances deserved, which on a club with the fourth-best goaltending in the league is at least partly the goaltending.
Five seasons, 159 games, 32 points — and 145 of those games have come in the last two.
The Finesse Game
79 shots at a median of 50 feet, 15 per cent from inside twenty and 71 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 48 shots on goal, 1 goal. Inside forty: 28 shots, 2 goals.
Three goals in seventy-nine games and seven in a 159-game career. Nothing here.
95.3 mph at the 79th percentile, on thirteen slap shots — a heavy reading on modest volume, which is the least reliable version of that number.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 219, and 72 penalty minutes in 79 games — the most of any Minnesota defenceman.
Top speed 21.4 mph, the 11th percentile. Bursts 0.2 a game, the 7th percentile. Those are the lowest readings on this blue line and among the lowest in the league for a man playing nineteen minutes.
2.63 miles a game, the 56th.
What he brings is weight. He clears the front of the net, finishes checks and is difficult to move, and on a blue line that also dresses a 166-pound captain and two 173-pound defencemen he is the only man who does. The 72 penalty minutes are the price and the club evidently thinks it is worth paying.
The Intangibles
Two hundred and tenth overall in 2014 to Los Angeles, never signed there, four American-league seasons, fourteen San Jose games across three years, and then 145 games in Minnesota at twenty-six and twenty-seven.
42.6 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 20th percentile.
He is the heavy man on the lightest blue line in the league, which is a specific and real job. The 36th-percentile chance share is the reservation and it is not a small one.
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.
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He clears the front of the net, finishes checks and is difficult to move, and on a blue line that also dresses a 166-pound captain and two 173-pound defencemen he is the only man who does.”
“What he brings is weight.”
“The 72 penalty minutes are the price and the club evidently thinks it is worth paying.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,311 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.9%
- 37th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47%
- 30th 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, 42 against. Expected: 47.7 and 51.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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, 2022-23 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 44th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.24 a game
- Distance
- 2.63 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.3 mph
- 72nd 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 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1311 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, 2022-23
- The club
- MIN took 50.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.9% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,311 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jared Spurgeon | 52.5% | 32.1% | 53.4% |
| Mats Zuccarello | 51.9% | 46.1% | 51.8% |
| Joel Eriksson Ek | 48.4% | 47.8% | 54.4% |
52.5% together, 32.1% for him apart and 53.4% for Spurgeon apart. He was worse away from Spurgeon, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Spurgeon 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
119 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 15% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.