This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Josh Manson
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Twenty-seven games, plus-13, and forty-two penalty minutes — the whole profile in three numbers.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | ANA | 28 | 0 | 3 | 3 | +1 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 0.0 | 18:26 |
| 2015-16 | ANA | 71 | 5 | 10 | 15 | +11 | 74 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 5.7 | 18:47 |
| 2016-17 | ANA | 82 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +14 | 82 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 88 | 5.7 | 18:38 |
| 2017-18 | ANA | 80 | 7 | 30 | 37 | +34 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 117 | 6.0 | 20:21 |
| 2018-19 | ANA | 74 | 3 | 13 | 16 | -8 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 96 | 3.1 | 22:18 |
| 2019-20 | ANA | 50 | 1 | 8 | 9 | -10 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 64 | 1.6 | 20:38 |
| 2020-21 | ANA | 23 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -3 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 5.3 | 17:59 |
| 2021-22 | ANA/COL | 67 | 6 | 10 | 16 | -11 | 65 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 92 | 6.5 | 18:59 |
| 2022-23 | COL | 27 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +13 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 41 | 4.9 | 17:41 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 502 | 30 | 100 | 130 | +41 | 485 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 631 | 4.8 | 19:37 |
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
2 goals and 8 assists in 27 games, plus-13, 42 penalty minutes, 17:41 a night. He missed 55 games and Colorado’s right side never recovered.
46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 416 minutes, the 31st percentile, and his ice went 23-11 against an expectation of 15.20-17.32. Read that carefully: the chances were against him and the goals were emphatically for him, which over 416 minutes is noise and should be treated as noise.
Nine seasons, 502 games, 130 points. The offence has never been the point.
The Finesse Game
41 shots at a median of 53 feet, 73 per cent from beyond forty, 14 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 30 shots on goal, no goals. Inside forty: 10 shots, two goals. On this volume the split says nothing except that he shoots from where a defensive defenceman shoots from, which is to say from nowhere dangerous.
The shot measures 92.6 mph at the 63rd percentile. It is a functional point shot and it is not a weapon.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 218, and this is the entire report. 42 penalty minutes in 27 games is a rate of more than one and a half a game — among the highest on the club.
21.5 mph at the 15th percentile with 0.5 bursts over twenty a game at the 26th. He is slow, he has always been slow, and he compensates by arriving early and finishing everything he starts. Against a rush he is exposed; along the wall and in front of his own net he is one of the harder men in the league to play against.
2.30 miles a game at the 32nd percentile — he covers less ground than almost any regular defenceman, which is the same fact as the speed.
The Intangibles
160th overall in 2011, out of Northeastern, and a son of Dave Manson — which in this case tells you something true about the style rather than nothing at all.
Colorado acquired him at the 2022 deadline and won a Cup that June. He is the defenceman they trust in the last five minutes of a one-goal game, and the 55 games he missed are why the third pair spent the season being Jack Johnson.
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
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 is slow, he has always been slow, and he compensates by arriving early and finishing everything he starts.”
“along the wall and in front of his own net he is one of the harder men in the league to play against”
“along the wall and in front of his own net he is one of the harder men in the league to play against”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 416 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.8%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.7%
- 43rd 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: 23 for, 11 against. Expected: 15.2 and 17.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 — 61 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 · 27 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 48th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.52 a game
- Distance
- 2.30 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.6 mph
- 54th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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 · 416 minutes at five-on-five
- Bowen Byram31%
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
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 5.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 416 minutes at five-on-five — 11th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| J.T. Compher | 49.2% | 45.3% | 53.1% |
| Bowen Byram | 42.5% | 48.5% | 50.4% |
| Logan O'Connor | 53.8% | 43.9% | 48.4% |
49.2% together, 45.3% for him apart and 53.1% for Compher apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Compher and did not follow him.
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
49 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.