This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Josh Anderson
Montreal Canadiens Right Wing
Two hundred and twenty-six pounds, and the heaviest man in the league's top ten for bursts of speed.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | CBJ | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0 | 13:27 |
| 2015-16 | CBJ | 12 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 9.1 | 10:42 |
| 2016-17 | CBJ | 78 | 17 | 12 | 29 | +12 | 89 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 119 | 14.3 | 12:01 |
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 63 | 19 | 11 | 30 | -1 | 42 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 188 | 10.1 | 18:02 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 82 | 27 | 20 | 47 | +25 | 60 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 230 | 11.7 | 17:01 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 26 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -8 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 63 | 1.6 | 16:04 |
| 2020-21 | MTL | 52 | 17 | 7 | 24 | -10 | 38 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 125 | 13.6 | 16:25 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 69 | 19 | 13 | 32 | -25 | 65 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 151 | 12.6 | 17:14 |
| 2022-23 | MTL | 69 | 21 | 11 | 32 | -8 | 72 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 164 | 12.8 | 16:58 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 457 | 122 | 81 | 203 | -16 | 387 | 11 | 4 | 24 | 1061 | 11.5 | 15:60 |
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
21 goals and 11 assists in 69 games — 32 points — with five game-winners and 72 penalty minutes. Minus-8, 16:58 a night, 164 shots at 12.8 per cent.
Twenty-one goals and eleven assists is close to a two-to-one split, and it is his career pattern: 122 goals and 81 assists in 457 games.
44.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 15th percentile, with his ice at 47-50 against an expectation of 38.73-49.25 — eight goals more at the offensive end than the chances deserved.
Nine seasons, 457 games, 203 points.
The Finesse Game
164 shots at a median of 21 feet, 46 per cent from inside twenty and 13 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 21 shots on goal, 2 goals. Inside forty: 140 shots, 19 goals, 13.57 per cent.
Twenty-three tip-ins out of 230 tracked attempts. He drives the net and scores from the crease, and eleven assists in sixty-nine games says he does nothing else with the puck.
94.2 mph at the 73rd percentile, on fourteen slap shots.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 226, and 72 penalty minutes.
Bursts 3.9 a game, the 98th percentile — tenth in the entire league, and he is the heaviest man in that top ten by nine pounds. Top speed 23.5 mph, the 97th percentile. 2.78 miles a game, the 66th.
A 226-pound winger accelerating at the tenth-highest rate in the league is a genuinely rare object. The men around him on that list weigh 177, 200, 205, 208 and 217 pounds.
He forechecks at full speed and finishes every check, and the 72 penalty minutes are the arithmetic of doing that at 23.5 mph.
The Intangibles
Ninety-fifth overall in 2012 to Columbus, six seasons there, and three in Montreal.
47.8 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 36th percentile.
The speed and the size are real and the hands are not. Twenty-one goals from a hard deployment on a bad club is useful; eleven assists in sixty-nine games is why he has never had a fifty-point season.
He is twenty-nine and has missed at least thirteen games in four of his nine seasons.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“He forechecks at full speed and finishes every check, and the 72 penalty minutes are the arithmetic of doing that at 23.5 mph.”
“He forechecks at full speed and finishes every check, and the 72 penalty minutes are the arithmetic of doing that at 23.5 mph.”
“He drives the net and scores from the crease, and eleven assists in sixty-nine games says he does nothing else with the puck.”
“He drives the net and scores from the crease, and eleven assists in sixty-nine games says he does nothing else with the puck.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 943 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44%
- 15th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.9%
- 12th 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: 47 for, 50 against. Expected: 38.7 and 49.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 68 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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 · 69 games
- Top speed
- 23.5 mph
- 98th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 3.90 a game
- Distance
- 2.78 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.2 mph
- 89th 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 · 943 minutes at five-on-five
- Nick Suzuki31%
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
- MTL took 44.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.0% — level with the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 943 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Savard | 39.3% | 46.3% | 45.0% |
| Nick Suzuki | 40.6% | 45.7% | 44.7% |
| Jordan Harris | 49.2% | 41.9% | 46.1% |
39.3% together, 46.3% for him apart and 45.0% for Savard apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
228 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.