This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jalen Chatfield
Carolina Hurricanes Defense
A 54.5 per cent chance share and a plus-22, from an undrafted defenceman playing 19 minutes a night.
| 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 | CAR | 72 | 8 | 14 | 22 | +15 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 90 | 8.9 | 15:12 |
| 2024-25 | CAR | 79 | 7 | 11 | 18 | +22 | 54 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 114 | 6.1 | 18:53 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 263 | 21 | 37 | 58 | +50 | 133 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 336 | 6.3 | 15:50 |
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
7 goals and 11 assists in 79 games for 18 points, plus-22 — the highest rating on the club — on 18:53 a night.
54.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 89th percentile, over 1,259 minutes. On-ice goals of 58-50 against an expected 58-48, so even a plus-22 understates how well the pairing played.
The Finesse Game
Minimal and honest. 114 shots with 76 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet and only 2 per cent from inside 20 — he keeps pucks alive at the line and does nothing else offensively.
The first pass is quick and safe. He is not asked to make a play and he does not attempt one, which on a pairing with an offensive partner is exactly right.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 209, and he plays considerably heavier than that. He finishes checks, defends his net front properly, and is one of the more willing shot-blockers in the league.
54 penalty minutes over 79 games is a high rate for a defenceman of this role, and it is the one place the aggression costs something.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, five American League seasons, and an NHL regular at 26 who has been the club’s most reliable defensive partner for three years.
At 29 the projection is unchanged: a genuinely good second-pair right shot on a modest contract, which is precisely the sort of player this organisation finds and other clubs do not.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“Undrafted, five American League seasons, and an NHL regular at 26 who has been the club's most reliable defensive partner for three years.”
“He finishes checks”
“defends his net front properly”
“is one of the more willing shot-blockers in the league”
“an NHL regular at 26 who has been the club's most reliable defensive partner for three years”
“He is not asked to make a play and he does not attempt one”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,259 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.7%
- 89th pct
- Shot attempts
- 58.9%
- 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: 58 for, 50 against. Expected: 58.0 and 47.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 40 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 86th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.10 a game
- Distance
- 2.60 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.9 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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 · 1259 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
- CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.7% — 1.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,259 minutes at five-on-five — 89th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dmitry Orlov | 56.0% | 49.4% | 48.2% |
| Sebastian Aho | 54.7% | 54.8% | 59.6% |
| Andrei Svechnikov | 53.0% | 55.5% | 52.8% |
56.0% together, 49.4% for him apart and 48.2% for Orlov 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
188 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.