This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Joe Veleno

Thirtieth overall, three seasons, and twenty points in a full one.

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

2020-21	DET	5	1	0	1	0	4	1	0	0	8	12.5	15:06
2021-22	DET	66	8	7	15	-14	22	0	0	0	73	11.0	13:13
2022-23	DET	81	9	11	20	-12	30	1	0	1	85	10.6	12:47
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	152	18	18	36	-26	56	2	0	1	166	10.8	13:03

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

9 goals and 11 assists in 81 games, minus-12, 12:47 a night, 85 shots at 10.6 per cent.

45.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 947 minutes, the 24th percentile, with his ice at 30-41 against an expectation of 30.49-36.55. Exactly as the chances predicted at the offensive end and five worse at the defensive one.

Three seasons, 152 games, 36 points.

The Finesse Game

85 shots at a median of 24 feet, 42 per cent from inside twenty.

Inside forty: 70 shots, nine goals, 12.86 per cent. Beyond forty: 14 shots, none.

88.5 mph at the 34th percentile. Nine goals on 85 shots at thirteen minutes is a fourth-line output and the two seasons before it were 8 and 1.

The passing has not arrived either: 18 assists in 152 games.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 201. 22.7 mph at the 71st percentile and 1.8 bursts over twenty a game at the 82nd — a good tracking line for a bottom-six centre, and the reason he keeps getting games.

2.13 miles a game at the 21st percentile. Short shifts.

30 penalty minutes in 81 games. He plays hard without being physical, which is a fair description of the whole player.

The Intangibles

30th overall in 2018 out of Drummondville, granted exceptional status into the QMJHL at 15 — one of a handful of players ever to be — and three NHL seasons producing 36 points.

He is 23 and the pace is real. Everything above the fourth line requires something the record has not yet shown.

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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“a good tracking line for a bottom-six centre, and the reason he keeps getting games”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 947 minutes

Expected goals: 45.5%; 24th pct
Shot attempts: 44.6%; 15th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 41 against. Expected: 30.5 and 36.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

12th

Numbers

24th

The two rank him within 12 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 — 56 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 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 76th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.84 a game
Distance: 2.13 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.5 mph; 59th 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

2022-23 · 947 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: DET took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.5% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 947 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jonatan Berggren	49.9%	41.4%	46.2%
Ben Chiarot	42.9%	46.8%	42.2%
Olli Määttä	48.2%	44.2%	44.5%

49.9% together, 41.4% for him apart and 46.2% for Berggren 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

104 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.