Josh Morrissey

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

16 goals and 60 assists in 78 games — 76 points — at 24:14 a night. Plus-2, 172 shots at 9.3 per cent, two on the power play, six game-winners, 41 penalty minutes.

76 points is a career high by thirty-nine, in his eighth season, at twenty-eight. He had never scored more than 37.

The 60 assists are tied for the fourth-most of any defenceman in this book, and the 76 points tied for second, behind only Erik Karlsson.

51.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,495 minutes — the most of any player on this roster — with his ice at 75-62 against an expectation of 68.54-64.78.

He started 55.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 76th percentile: 535 attacking draws against 424 defensive ones.

Five hundred and thirty-five attacking draws is a very large number for a defenceman, and it is the caveat the 76 points needs: this was a first-pair defenceman given the puck in the right end as often as anybody at the position.

The Finesse Game

172 shots at a median of 49 feet, with 66 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 9 per cent from inside twenty.

Beyond forty feet: 111 shots on goal and seven goals — 6.31 per cent, nearly double the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 43 shots and seven goals, 16.28 against a league rate of 8.83. Inside twenty: 18 shots and two goals.

A hundred and eleven long shots on goal is a very large volume and seven goals is a very good return from it, and this book has printed enough of these by now to say what it means: on one season and a hundred shots, a rate like that is mostly the season.

265 tracked attempts, 92 of them slap shots — a 34.7 per cent share — and a shot measured at 98.2 mph, the 92nd percentile.

A career 6.4 per cent across 501 games, against 9.3 last season. Sixteen goals is a career high by four.

The 60 assists are the file. He walks the line, he moves the puck early, and 186 career assists against 56 goals says the distribution has always been the skill even when the totals were half this size.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 195 pounds, with 41 penalty minutes in 78 games and 255 in 501 career games.

3.56 miles a game — the 98th percentile, the twelfth-most of any skater in this book — at a top speed of 21.5 mph, the 12th percentile, with 0.5 bursts above twenty a game at the 25th.

That is the most extreme version of a shape this edition has found on defenceman after defenceman, and it belongs at the end of the argument rather than the start. He is in the bottom eighth of the league for top speed and the top fiftieth for ground covered, at twenty-four minutes a night.

Whatever is happening in those miles is turning, pivoting and re-attacking rather than sprinting. He beats a forechecker with his edges and never with his stride.

He is not physical, does not clear his crease by force, and at 195 pounds is not going to. He defends with his stick and his position instead, and the 41 penalty minutes are the cost of a small defenceman doing it against big forwards.

The Intangibles

Thirteenth overall in 2013, eight seasons, 501 games, 242 points, all of them here.

56 goals and 186 assists, and a plus-29.

He is twenty-eight, and last season he went from a good first-pair defenceman to one of the three highest-scoring in the league in a single year.

The honest reading is that the deployment did some of it and the player did the rest. Five hundred and thirty-five attacking draws is a great deal of help; 60 assists is a great deal of production; and a career that read 31, 21, 37 and then 76 is a jump that this book cannot yet tell you is real.