This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Josh Manson
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Five hundred and seventy-two penalty minutes in 578 games, and the ice where Colorado's entire finishing surplus lived.
| 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 | COL | 76 | 8 | 17 | 25 | +11 | 87 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 123 | 6.5 | 17:47 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 578 | 38 | 117 | 155 | +52 | 572 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 754 | 5.0 | 19:23 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Seventy-six games, 8 goals and 17 assists, 1 shorthanded, 87 penalty minutes, 17:47 a night and plus-11. He took 52.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,191 minutes, the 72nd percentile, and his ice went 55-48 against an expectation of 51.80-46.70.
Twenty goals of scoring above what the chances were worth, on the second pair, is where the club’s entire finishing surplus lived. It is also not a thing a defenceman controls, and it will not happen again.
The Finesse Game
One hundred and twenty-three shots at a median of 48 feet with 69 per cent from beyond 40, and 8 went in — a career-best figure against 38 goals in 578 games. Nothing about the shot is dangerous.
Seventeen assists is a career-high rate too, and 117 in 578 games is the record of a defenceman who makes the first pass and then stops. He is not asked to carry and does not try to.
The Physical Game
He clears the front of his own net and punishes people along the wall, at 6-3 and 218, and 572 penalty minutes in 578 games is what a career of that costs. He is the reason Cale Makar and Samuel Girard are allowed to play the way they do.
He finishes every check and takes the man rather than the puck when the two are separable. Eighty-seven penalty minutes is a lot on a club killing five minutes a night, and it is the price rather than a failing.
The Intangibles
A sixth-round pick, 160th overall in 2011, out of Northeastern, and now 33 with 578 games and a Stanley Cup ring. His father played more than a thousand games in the league and was one of its most penalised defencemen, and the game is recognisably the same one.
He has missed significant time in five of the last six seasons. On a club whose blue line is otherwise built entirely of skill, seventy-six games from him is worth more than the numbers say.
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 clears the front of his own net and punishes people along the wall, at 6-3 and 218, and 572 penalty minutes in 578 games is what a career of that costs.”
“He is the reason Cale Makar and Samuel Girard are allowed to play the way they do.”
“He finishes every check and takes the man rather than the puck when the two are separable.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,191 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.6%
- 72nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.2%
- 90th 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: 55 for, 48 against. Expected: 51.8 and 46.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 52 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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, 2023-24 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 76th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.80 a game
- Distance
- 2.52 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.6 mph
- 56th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 1191 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, 2023-24
- The club
- COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.6% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,191 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Girard | 53.7% | 51.9% | 55.0% |
| Miles Wood | 50.2% | 53.8% | 47.0% |
| Ross Colton | 53.6% | 52.1% | 51.2% |
53.7% together, 51.9% for him apart and 55.0% for Girard apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
176 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.