This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jalen Chatfield
Carolina Hurricanes Defense
Undrafted, third pair, and the one Hurricane whose ice finished exactly where the chances said it would.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | VAN | 18 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -11 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0.0 | 13:26 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 16 | 0 | 3 | 3 | +1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 0.0 | 14:47 |
| 2022-23 | CAR | 78 | 6 | 8 | 14 | +23 | 35 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 93 | 6.5 | 14:07 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 112 | 6 | 12 | 18 | +13 | 55 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 132 | 4.5 | 14:06 |
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
6 goals and 8 assists in 78 games — 14 points at 14:07 a night, plus-23, with 35 penalty minutes.
60.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,034 minutes, the 98th percentile. His ice went 49-32 against an expectation of 48.51-31.76, which is as close as a season gets to landing on its own forecast.
On a club that scored eighteen fewer goals than its chances predicted, the third-pair defenceman is the man who came out level. That is mostly noise and it is worth one sentence, because everyone else’s shortfall was not.
The Finesse Game
93 attempts at a median of 50 feet, 70 per cent from beyond forty, off a 91.6 mph shot at the 56th percentile. Three goals on 64 shots from beyond forty and three on 27 from inside it — six goals is more than he had any right to and 8 assists is the truer measure.
He is not a puck-mover and the club does not run anything through him. In 112 career games he has 18 points.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 209, and 1.98 miles a game at the 15th percentile — the lowest distance among the club’s regular defencemen, which is what a fourteen-minute night of short shifts looks like rather than a verdict on his legs. His top speed is 22.3 mph at the 50th.
35 penalty minutes, and he plays a contact game in the corners without much of a reputation for it.
The Intangibles
He arrived without a pick attached — undrafted out of Windsor, three years in the American League, and a regular NHL job at 27.
A third pair on the best possession team in hockey is a comfortable place to be, and the honest caveat is that his 98th-percentile share is a fact about Carolina before it is a fact about 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.
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He arrived without a pick attached”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,034 minutes
- Expected goals
- 60.4%
- 98th pct
- Shot attempts
- 60.1%
- 98th 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: 49 for, 32 against. Expected: 48.5 and 31.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 75 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 120 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1034 minutes at five-on-five
- Calvin de Haannow TBL47%
- Shayne Gostisbeherenow DET22%
- Brent Burns10%
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
- CAR took 58.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 60.4% — 1.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,034 minutes at five-on-five — 62nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calvin de Haan | 58.5% | 62.2% | 65.4% |
| Jesperi Kotkaniemi | 53.6% | 63.3% | 59.3% |
| Martin Necas | 60.4% | 60.4% | 54.1% |
58.5% together, 62.2% for him apart and 65.4% for de Haan 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
143 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 52 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.