Jesper Fast
Carolina Hurricanes Right Wing
Sixty-four per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet, which is the highest share on a club built to get there.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | NYR | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 11:17 |
| 2014-15 | NYR | 58 | 6 | 8 | 14 | -1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 11.5 | 11:48 |
| 2015-16 | NYR | 79 | 10 | 20 | 30 | +9 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 75 | 13.3 | 14:56 |
| 2016-17 | NYR | 68 | 6 | 15 | 21 | +6 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 56 | 10.7 | 13:48 |
| 2017-18 | NYR | 71 | 13 | 20 | 33 | -10 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 80 | 16.3 | 14:53 |
| 2018-19 | NYR | 66 | 8 | 12 | 20 | -3 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 80 | 10.0 | 15:43 |
| 2019-20 | NYR | 69 | 12 | 17 | 29 | +16 | 20 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 84 | 14.3 | 16:36 |
| 2020-21 | CAR | 46 | 6 | 13 | 19 | -4 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 38 | 15.8 | 15:18 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 82 | 14 | 20 | 34 | +24 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 97 | 14.4 | 14:49 |
| 2022-23 | CAR | 80 | 10 | 19 | 29 | +9 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 13.2 | 14:44 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 630 | 85 | 144 | 229 | +41 | 150 | 2 | 2 | 9 | 645 | 13.2 | 14:42 |
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
10 goals and 19 assists in 80 games — 29 points at 14:44 a night, plus-9, with 16 penalty minutes on 76 shots at 13.16 per cent.
57.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,054 minutes, the 94th percentile. His ice went 42-37 against an expectation of 46.76-34.45.
52.2 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 60th percentile in the league — a mildly favourable share, and second-hardest among the Carolina forwards who played a regular shift.
The Finesse Game
76 attempts at a median of 13 feet, with 64 per cent from inside twenty and 11 per cent from beyond forty. Eight of his ten goals came from inside twenty feet at 17.0 per cent.
He barely shoots. 76 attempts across 80 games is a shot a night, and it converts at 13.16 per cent because every one of them is taken from somewhere a shot is supposed to be taken from. His career rate is 13.18 per cent across 630 games, so this is not a hot year; it is a policy.
On a club that lost eighteen goals to bad finishing, the man taking the fewest and best shots is a useful control on the argument. The problem was never that Carolina did not know where the net was.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 191 with 16 penalty minutes, and a sixth-round pick’s game: he goes to the wall, he comes out with it, and nobody notices.
The tracking is unremarkable — 21.9 mph at the 34th percentile, 2.26 miles a game at the 28th, 0.7 bursts at the 40th. He is not fast, does not cover ground, and has played 630 NHL games anyway, which is the sort of thing this book is supposed to be able to explain and cannot.
The Intangibles
157th overall in 2010, ten seasons, and a reputation among coaches that has never matched his reputation among anyone else.
He is trusted a man short, and Carolina’s penalty kill was sixth in the league in expected goals against a sixty.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
74.4% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is trusted a man short”
“he goes to the wall, he comes out with it, and nobody notices”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,054 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.6%
- 95th pct
- Shot attempts
- 60.3%
- 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: 42 for, 37 against. Expected: 46.8 and 34.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 37 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 42nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.74 a game
- Distance
- 2.26 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.1 mph
- 55th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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 · 1054 minutes at five-on-five
- Jordan Staal84%
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 57.6% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,054 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jordan Staal | 59.8% | 43.4% | 42.3% |
| Jordan Martinook | 59.4% | 49.5% | 56.1% |
| Brett Pesce | 57.0% | 58.1% | 55.4% |
59.8% together, 43.4% for him apart and 42.3% for Staal 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
121 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 64% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.