This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →

Jeff Carter

The 3rd-heaviest penalty-killing load of the Pittsburgh forwards at 37, and the worst pair share of any Penguin with Kris Letang.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2005-06	PHI	81	23	19	42	+10	40	6	2	7	189	12.2	12:04
2006-07	PHI	62	14	23	37	-17	48	3	2	1	215	6.5	19:00
2007-08	PHI	82	29	24	53	+6	55	7	2	5	260	11.2	18:51
2008-09	PHI	82	46	38	84	+23	68	13	4	12	342	13.5	20:57
2009-10	PHI	74	33	28	61	+2	38	11	2	6	319	10.3	19:18
2010-11	PHI	80	36	30	66	+27	39	8	0	7	335	10.8	18:15
2011-12	CBJ/LAK	55	21	13	34	-12	16	10	0	2	184	11.4	19:11
2012-13	LAK	48	26	7	33	0	16	8	0	8	133	19.6	17:35
2013-14	LAK	72	27	23	50	+8	44	8	1	5	256	10.5	18:57
2014-15	LAK	82	28	34	62	+7	28	10	1	5	218	12.8	17:58
2015-16	LAK	77	24	38	62	+18	20	4	1	6	242	9.9	18:23
2016-17	LAK	82	32	34	66	+2	41	10	1	9	250	12.8	18:02
2017-18	LAK	27	13	9	22	+4	2	6	1	2	85	15.3	17:51
2018-19	LAK	76	13	20	33	-20	42	5	1	1	174	7.5	18:09
2019-20	LAK	60	17	10	27	-21	36	3	0	7	182	9.3	16:56
2020-21	LAK/PIT	54	17	13	30	+3	22	2	0	1	154	11.0	16:34
2021-22	PIT	76	19	26	45	-8	38	3	1	2	200	9.5	17:40
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1170	418	389	807	+32	593	117	19	86	3738	11.2	17:60

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, 19 goals and 26 assists at 17:40 a night, minus-8, thirty-eight penalty minutes, 200 shots. Seventeen seasons, 1,170 games, 807 points and 418 goals out of an eleventh-overall pick in 2003.

The Finesse Game

2.11 even-strength points per 60 is the 69th percentile and 8.94 shots per 60 the 76th — two hundred shots in a seventeenth season, at 9.5 per cent.

His shot is 97.4 mph, the 94th percentile among forwards, from a 23-foot median with fifty-three per cent from the slot. Velocity and geography both intact at 37.

49.4 per cent of the expected goals and 47.2 per cent of the attempts, the 25th percentile, out of 39.9 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 87th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

That is a hard chair, and it was the point. On a club that gave Evgeni Malkin the 13th-softest assignment in hockey and Sidney Crosby the 25th, somebody had to take the other end.

The pair file says what it cost. Across 622 attempts with Kris Letang the two took 43.0 per cent of the expected goals; Letang apart from Carter is at 54.3. With Brian Dumoulin, 46.3 against Dumoulin’s 52.5 apart. Both of Pittsburgh’s top-pair defencemen posted their worst regular share of the season beside him.

The Physical Game

4.42 hits per 60 is the 57th percentile and 2.23 blocks the 76th at 6-3 and 219 pounds. 0.54 penalties drawn per 60 is the 25th percentile against 0.80 taken, thirty-eight penalty minutes in seventy-six games.

The Intangibles

1:27 short-handed a night is the 70th percentile among forwards, in a seventeenth NHL season.

8.1 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 77th percentile and 10.03 miles per 60 the 83rd, on a 22.4 mph top speed at the 47th. He is still sprinting and still covering ground at 37, which is the least expected line in the file.

He is 37 with 418 career goals and has played seventy-six, fifty-four and sixty games in the last three seasons. The shot, the volume and the legs are all still there. The possession shares out of a hard chair, and what happened to Letang and Dumoulin beside him, are the reason the ice time is 17:40 and not more.

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.

penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“1:27 short-handed a night is the 70th percentile among forwards, in a seventeenth NHL season.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“Seventeen seasons, 1,170 games, 807 points and 418 goals out of an eleventh-overall pick in 2003.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,037 minutes

Expected goals: 49.4%; 51st pct
Shot attempts: 47.2%; 31st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 38 for, 50 against. Expected: 41.0 and 42.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

78th

Numbers

51st

The report ranks him 27 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 67 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: 22.4 mph; 63rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.38 a game
Distance: 2.95 miles a game
Hardest shot: 97.4 mph; 96th pct

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 · 1037 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: PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,037 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Kasperi Kapanen	50.5%	48.9%	55.7%
Mike Matheson	45.4%	51.8%	57.0%
Kris Letang	43.0%	52.9%	54.3%

50.5% together, 48.9% for him apart and 55.7% for Kapanen apart. Kapanen was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

240 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.