This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Jan Rutta
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
The 2nd-fewest takeaways and the 4th-fewest giveaways of all 202 defencemen — he barely touches it, and he never loses it.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | CHI | 57 | 6 | 14 | 20 | -1 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 71 | 8.5 | 19:15 |
| 2018-19 | CHI/TBL | 37 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +4 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 4.8 | 15:36 |
| 2019-20 | TBL | 33 | 1 | 6 | 7 | +6 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 2.3 | 15:33 |
| 2020-21 | TBL | 35 | 0 | 8 | 8 | +12 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 0.0 | 16:02 |
| 2021-22 | TBL | 76 | 3 | 15 | 18 | +25 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86 | 3.5 | 16:23 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 238 | 12 | 49 | 61 | +46 | 123 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 288 | 4.2 | 16:47 |
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
76 games for Tampa Bay, 3 goals and 15 assists at 16:23 a night, plus-25, forty-seven penalty minutes, 86 shots. Undrafted, and 238 NHL games with three clubs out of it, the last of them the club that won the Eastern Conference.
The Finesse Game
0.29 takeaways per 60 is the 2nd-fewest of all 202 defencemen who played forty games and 0.87 giveaways per 60 is the 4th-fewest.
Both ends of the puck ledger near the floor, in the same file. The reading is not that he is careless or careful — it is that the puck spends very little time on his stick and he does almost nothing with it when it does.
0.94 even-strength points per 60 is the 48th percentile and none of his points came on the power play: two seconds a night, the 8th percentile.
Ninety-four per cent of his attempts came from outside the slot at a 50-foot median, at 6-3 and 204 pounds.
53.7 per cent of the expected goals and 52.3 per cent of the attempts, out of 53.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 223rd-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. His ice went 64-41 against an expectation of 51.20-44.20 — thirteen goals of surplus in front, on the club that won the Eastern Conference.
The Physical Game
4.48 hits per 60 is the 55th percentile and 3.42 blocks the 25th — the second of those is low for a defensive defenceman.
0.53 penalties drawn per 60 against 1.01 taken, the 82nd percentile, and forty-seven penalty minutes came out of seventy-six games at sixteen minutes a night. The net at the 17th percentile is the weakest column here.
The Intangibles
3.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 90th percentile against a 22.0 mph top speed at the 51st and 8.29 miles per 60 at the 32nd.
Lots of short sprints, ordinary pace, very little total ground. For a sixteen-minute third-pair defenceman that combination reads as short, hard shifts.
He is 32, undrafted, with 238 NHL games and a plus-46 career. The possession shares and the goal surplus were produced in Tampa’s system, and this book cannot separate the two. What travels is the shot chart, the sprint count and a man who does not lose the puck because he does not carry it.
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
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.
“Undrafted, and 238 NHL games with three clubs out of it, the last of them the club that won the Eastern Conference.”
“Ninety-four per cent of his attempts came from outside the slot at a 50-foot median, at 6-3 and 204 pounds.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,141 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.7%
- 80th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.3%
- 74th 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: 64 for, 41 against. Expected: 51.2 and 44.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 32 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 — 60 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 67th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.89 a game
- Distance
- 2.26 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.7 mph
- 81st 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 TBL · 1141 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
- TBL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.7% — 1.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,141 minutes at five-on-five — 80th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victor Hedman | 56.4% | 44.8% | 54.3% |
| Steven Stamkos | 48.6% | 56.0% | 54.3% |
| Ondrej Palat | 53.4% | 53.8% | 54.9% |
56.4% together, 44.8% for him apart and 54.3% for Hedman apart. He was worse away from Hedman, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Hedman 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
127 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.