This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jordan Staal
Carolina Hurricanes Center
Thirty-five years old, seventeen goals, and thirteen of them from inside twenty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006-07 | PIT | 81 | 29 | 13 | 42 | +16 | 24 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 131 | 22.1 | 14:56 |
| 2007-08 | PIT | 82 | 12 | 16 | 28 | -5 | 55 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 183 | 6.6 | 18:16 |
| 2008-09 | PIT | 82 | 22 | 27 | 49 | +5 | 37 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 166 | 13.3 | 19:51 |
| 2009-10 | PIT | 82 | 21 | 28 | 49 | +19 | 57 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 195 | 10.8 | 19:24 |
| 2010-11 | PIT | 42 | 11 | 19 | 30 | +7 | 24 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 91 | 12.1 | 21:21 |
| 2011-12 | PIT | 62 | 25 | 25 | 50 | +11 | 34 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 149 | 16.8 | 20:03 |
| 2012-13 | CAR | 48 | 10 | 21 | 31 | -18 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 114 | 8.8 | 20:06 |
| 2013-14 | CAR | 82 | 15 | 25 | 40 | +2 | 34 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 165 | 9.1 | 18:57 |
| 2014-15 | CAR | 46 | 6 | 18 | 24 | -6 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 92 | 6.5 | 18:33 |
| 2015-16 | CAR | 82 | 20 | 28 | 48 | +6 | 34 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 151 | 13.3 | 18:18 |
| 2016-17 | CAR | 75 | 16 | 29 | 45 | -1 | 38 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 164 | 9.8 | 18:40 |
| 2017-18 | CAR | 79 | 19 | 27 | 46 | -4 | 26 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 160 | 11.9 | 19:15 |
| 2018-19 | CAR | 50 | 11 | 17 | 28 | +6 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 121 | 9.1 | 18:17 |
| 2019-20 | CAR | 68 | 8 | 19 | 27 | +3 | 40 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 125 | 6.4 | 17:30 |
| 2020-21 | CAR | 53 | 16 | 22 | 38 | +2 | 30 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 103 | 15.5 | 18:29 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 78 | 17 | 19 | 36 | +11 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 146 | 11.6 | 16:38 |
| 2022-23 | CAR | 81 | 17 | 17 | 34 | +7 | 32 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 124 | 13.7 | 16:16 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 1173 | 275 | 370 | 645 | +61 | 555 | 46 | 18 | 39 | 2380 | 11.6 | 18:23 |
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
17 goals and 17 assists in 81 games — 34 points at 16:16 a night, plus-7, with 32 penalty minutes on 124 shots at 13.71 per cent.
57.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,064 minutes, the 94th percentile. His ice went 45-37 against an expectation of 46.14-33.9, which is close at one end and three goals adrift at the other — on this club, a good result.
He is the captain, he is 35, and this was his eleventh season in Carolina and his seventeenth in the league.
The Finesse Game
124 attempts at a median of 19 feet, 51 per cent from inside twenty and 10 per cent from beyond forty. Thirteen of his seventeen goals came from inside twenty feet, at 19.4 per cent; from beyond forty he took twelve shots and scored none.
That is a 35-year-old with a completely honest shot chart. He does not shoot from range because there is no reason to, and 13.71 per cent overall is the reward for only taking the shot that pays. 275 goals in 1,173 games says he has always known where to stand.
The 17 assists are the low number and they have been low for a decade. He is not the man the puck goes through.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 220, and his top speed is 23.2 mph at the 92nd percentile in his seventeenth season, which is the sort of figure that makes you check the age again.
32 penalty minutes at sixteen minutes a night against the other club’s best centres. He plays a heavy, upright, positional game and takes the faceoff that starts it — the matchup centre’s job, done for so long that the club has built two eras of forward group around him.
2.66 miles a game at the 58th percentile. He is not covering the ice the way the younger men do and he does not need to.
The Intangibles
Second overall in 2006, a Cup with Pittsburgh at 20, and then seventeen seasons of being the most useful player on the ice without ever being the most famous.
He is the captain of the best possession club in hockey and the one man in the room who has been through a season this good ending badly. The book’s records say a seven-game series is a different regime from an 82-game schedule; he is the reason a reader might think Carolina knows it.
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
65.3% of his attempts in the slot, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“takes the faceoff that starts it”
“He is the captain of the best possession club in hockey and the one man in the room who has been through a season this good ending badly.”
“the matchup centre's job, done for so long that the club has built two eras of forward group around him”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,064 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.6%
- 95th pct
- Shot attempts
- 61.1%
- 99th 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: 45 for, 37 against. Expected: 46.1 and 33.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 7 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 141 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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
2022-23 · 1064 minutes at five-on-five
- Jesper Fast83%
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, 1,064 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jesper Fast | 59.8% | 42.3% | 43.4% |
| Jordan Martinook | 59.8% | 47.8% | 55.1% |
| Brett Pesce | 56.0% | 59.0% | 55.8% |
59.8% together, 42.3% for him apart and 43.4% for Fast 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
170 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.