Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →

44

Joshua Brown

Arizona Coyotes Defense

Six-foot-five, 221 career penalty minutes, and the sixth percentile in five-on-five share.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19FLA37112-328000283.613:18
2019-20FLA56358+139001486.313:25
2020-21OTT26011-13000080.014:08
2021-22OTT/BOS52066-737000450.014:13
2022-23ARI68437-1887000685.915:46
2023-24 so far
Career23981624-282210011974.114:19

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

4 goals and 3 assists in 68 games — 7 points at 15:46 a night, minus-18, on 68 shots and 87 penalty minutes.

41.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 872 minutes, the 6th percentile. His ice went 37-52 against an expectation of 29.74-42.59 — seven goals of scoring above the chances and nine more conceded than they predicted, which is a pairing being outplayed and rescued at one end only.

The Finesse Game

68 attempts at a median of 52 feet, 67 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 5.88 per cent. 24 points in 239 career games.

There is nothing here. The first pass is short and safe when there is time and off the glass when there is not, and a club trying to play out of its own end will not do it through this man.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 220, and 221 penalty minutes in 239 career games is the entire job description. He hits, he clears the front of the net, and forwards who go to the paint against him pay something for it.

The skating is why the ceiling is a third pair: 21.9 mph at the 29th percentile and 0.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 12th. He is beaten wide by anybody quick and he does not recover, so the physical game only works when the play comes to him.

The Intangibles

A hundred and fifty-second overall in 2013, a sixth-round pick with 239 NHL games, which is a good deal more than most sixth-round defencemen get.

He is 29. He is the last line of a defence corps that has been rebuilt twice, and his presence on a top four at any point this season should be read as a statement about the club rather than about him.

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.

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He hits, he clears the front of the net, and forwards who go to the paint against him pay something for it.”

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He hits, he clears the front of the net, and forwards who go to the paint against him pay something for it.”

  • transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “The first pass is short and safe when there is time and off the glass when there is not, and a club trying to play out of its own end will not do it through this man.”

  • edgeshe lacks it· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone

    “He is beaten wide by anybody quick and he does not recover, so the physical game only works when the play comes to him.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 872 minutes

Expected goals
41.1%
6th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
40.5%
3rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 52 against. Expected: 29.7 and 42.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
12th
Numbers
6th

The two rank him within 6 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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 · 872 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, 2022-23

The club
ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.1% — 4.4 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 872 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Christian Fischer34.0%44.2%46.7%
Clayton Keller42.0%40.7%50.4%
Travis Boyd30.2%46.2%45.6%

34.0% together, 44.2% for him apart and 46.7% for Fischer 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

97 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.