Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

10

Jordan Spence

Ottawa Senators Defense

Twenty-four assists and a plus-23 in Los Angeles from a 5-11 defenceman, traded to Ottawa in the summer.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22LAK2426802001414.919:45
2022-23LAK6011+1000060.014:00
2023-24LAK7122224+512100802.514:26
2024-25LAK7942428+2316000864.716:47
2025-26 so far
Career18085361+29301012133.816:10

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

4 goals and 24 assists in 79 games for Los Angeles — 28 points at 16:47 a night, plus-23, on 16 penalty minutes.

The plus-23 was among the best figures on a club that finished second in the league in goals against, so it is a fact about the Kings as much as about him. What it does establish is that he played a full season of third-pairing minutes on a good defensive team without hurting it.

The Finesse Game

86 attempts and 4 goals — the shot is not the point. 24 assists in 79 games from a third pairing is a real number, and it comes from the first pass.

He is quick, he retrieves the puck and moves it before the forecheck arrives, and he skates it out himself when the pass is not there. On a club whose exits are its problem below the top pair, that is the specific reason he was acquired.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 188 and among the smallest defencemen in the league. He does not clear a crease, he does not win a battle against a heavy forward, and he does not pretend otherwise.

16 penalty minutes in 79 games. He defends by getting to the puck first and by being difficult to line up, and when that fails he does not have a second answer.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick in 2019, born in Australia and raised in Prince Edward Island, and 180 NHL games in across four seasons in Los Angeles.

Ottawa acquired him in the summer. He is 24, he has never played more than 17 minutes a night, and the club is betting that the puck-moving is worth the weight it is giving up on the third pair.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,132 minutes

Expected goals
55.5%
92nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
55.8%
93rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 47 against. Expected: 45.4 and 36.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
30th
Numbers
92nd

The numbers rank him 62 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with LAK · 1132 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, 2024-25

The club
LAK took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.5% — 1.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,132 minutes at five-on-five — 79th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jacob Moverare59.7%53.5%53.5%
Kevin Fiala59.4%53.8%57.2%
Alex Laferriere59.2%53.8%54.2%

59.7% together, 53.5% for him apart and 53.5% for Moverare 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

151 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 58 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 85% from beyond forty.