This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jared Spurgeon
Minnesota Wild Defense
One hundred and sixty-six pounds — the lightest defenceman in this book — at twenty-two minutes a night, and plus-32 for the second season running.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | MIN | 53 | 4 | 8 | 12 | -1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 38 | 10.5 | 15:04 |
| 2011-12 | MIN | 70 | 3 | 20 | 23 | -4 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 92 | 3.3 | 21:36 |
| 2012-13 | MIN | 39 | 5 | 10 | 15 | +1 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 67 | 7.5 | 21:33 |
| 2013-14 | MIN | 67 | 5 | 21 | 26 | +15 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 91 | 5.5 | 22:38 |
| 2014-15 | MIN | 66 | 9 | 16 | 25 | +3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 128 | 7.0 | 22:37 |
| 2015-16 | MIN | 77 | 11 | 18 | 29 | +11 | 14 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 122 | 9.0 | 22:41 |
| 2016-17 | MIN | 76 | 10 | 28 | 38 | +33 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 144 | 6.9 | 24:02 |
| 2017-18 | MIN | 61 | 9 | 28 | 37 | -6 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 110 | 8.2 | 24:33 |
| 2018-19 | MIN | 82 | 14 | 29 | 43 | -1 | 20 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 152 | 9.2 | 24:09 |
| 2019-20 | MIN | 62 | 12 | 20 | 32 | -1 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 112 | 10.7 | 22:34 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 54 | 7 | 18 | 25 | -2 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 7.4 | 22:05 |
| 2021-22 | MIN | 65 | 10 | 30 | 40 | +32 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 116 | 8.6 | 21:09 |
| 2022-23 | MIN | 79 | 11 | 23 | 34 | +32 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 149 | 7.4 | 21:49 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 851 | 110 | 269 | 379 | +112 | 144 | 33 | 0 | 20 | 1415 | 7.8 | 22:13 |
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
11 goals and 23 assists in 79 games — 34 points — at 21:49 a night, and plus-32. 149 shots, 14 penalty minutes.
Plus-32 in 2021-22 and plus-32 in 2022-23. Two seasons, the same number, on a club that scored the twenty-second-most goals in the league.
52.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 72nd percentile, with his ice at 57-36 against an expectation of 52.70-47.33 — eleven goals better at the defensive end than the chances deserved. Some of that is Gustavsson’s .9309. Some of it is not.
Fourteen penalty minutes in seventy-nine games at twenty-two minutes a night, which is seven minor penalties across a season of hard assignments.
Thirteen seasons, 851 games, 379 points, all of them in Minnesota.
The Finesse Game
149 shots at a median of 42 feet, 16 per cent from inside twenty and 53 per cent from beyond forty — the least perimeter shot chart of any Minnesota defenceman by a distance.
Beyond forty: 78 shots on goal, 4 goals, 5.13 per cent, against a league rate for defencemen of 3.17. Inside forty: 65 shots, 7 goals, 10.77 per cent.
Forty-five per cent of his shots came from inside forty feet. On this blue line the next-highest share is 37 per cent and two of the others are under 25. Eleven goals from a defenceman with one power-play goal comes from being willing to go there.
69 slap shots out of 212 tracked attempts — a third, in a league where the defencemen’s share has fallen from 35.89 per cent in 2017-18 to 24.17.
89.2 mph at the 39th percentile. At 166 pounds there is not a great deal of mass behind it and the shot has never been the point.
The Physical Game
5-9 and 166 pounds — the lightest defenceman in this book, and the third-lightest skater in the league at any position. The two men below him are wingers.
Top speed 22.2 mph, the 44th percentile; bursts 0.8 a game, the 43rd; 3.13 miles a game, the 87th.
A hundred and sixty-six pounds cannot clear a crease and he does not try. What he does instead is refuse to be beaten to the spot: he takes the inside lane, angles a man to the boards and lifts the stick rather than the body, and thirteen seasons of it have produced 851 games without the injury record that size usually buys.
The fourteen penalty minutes are the tell. A small defenceman who has been beaten hooks; he does not get beaten.
The Intangibles
One hundred and fifty-sixth overall in 2008 to the New York Islanders, who never signed him. Minnesota did, at twenty, and got 851 games and the captaincy out of it.
46.6 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 31st percentile.
He is thirty-three, and this book’s affection for the small defenceman who wins by position rather than by mass is on the record. What is measurable here is a plus-32 in each of the last two seasons, an eleven-goal defensive surplus on his ice, and fourteen penalty minutes. What is not measurable is how much longer a 166-pound body does this.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
22.4% of his attempts in the slot, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.18 penalty minutes a game over 79, 5th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“What he does instead is refuse to be beaten to the spot: he takes the inside lane, angles a man to the boards and lifts the stick rather than the body, and thirteen seasons of it have produced 851 games without the injury record that size usually buys.”
“Minnesota did, at twenty, and got 851 games and the captaincy out of it.”
“A hundred and sixty-six pounds cannot clear a crease and he does not try.”
“What he does instead is refuse to be beaten to the spot: he takes the inside lane, angles a man to the boards and lifts the stick rather than the body, and thirteen seasons of it have produced 851 games without the injury record that size usually buys.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,322 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.7%
- 72nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.6%
- 58th 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: 57 for, 36 against. Expected: 52.7 and 47.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 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 — 76 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
- 22.2 mph
- 73rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.80 a game
- Distance
- 3.13 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.2 mph
- 36th 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 · 1322 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 52.7% — 2.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,322 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jake Middleton | 52.5% | 53.4% | 32.1% |
| Mats Zuccarello | 56.2% | 50.8% | 49.5% |
| Kirill Kaprizov | 61.9% | 48.3% | 52.3% |
52.5% together, 53.4% for him apart and 32.1% for Middleton apart. Middleton was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Middleton than for him.
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
205 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 16% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 53% from beyond forty.