This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Juraj Slafkovský
Montreal Canadiens Left Wing
First overall in 2022, thirty-nine games at eighteen, and the lowest chance share on the club.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | MTL | 39 | 4 | 6 | 10 | -13 | 33 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 9.5 | 12:13 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 39 | 4 | 6 | 10 | -13 | 33 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 9.5 | 12:13 |
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 6 assists in 39 games — 10 points — at 12:13 a night. Minus-13, 42 shots, 33 penalty minutes.
He was eighteen for most of it.
41.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five is the lowest figure on the Montreal roster, with his ice at 10-19 against an expectation of 13.91-19.84 across 433 minutes. Four goals short at the offensive end and exactly the chances at the defensive.
Four hundred and thirty-three minutes is a quarter of a season and nothing in the numbers is stable. What can be said is that the club he was on generated the third-fewest chances in the league and he was on the ice for the worst of them.
One season, 39 games, 10 points.
The Finesse Game
42 shots at a median of 32 feet, 17 per cent from inside twenty and 29 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 8 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 32 shots, 4 goals.
Seventeen per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet is the lowest close-range share of any Montreal forward, and it is the wrong shot chart for a 6-3, 225-pound winger. Everything this book has found says the goals are inside forty feet and he is not going there yet.
93.1 mph at the 65th percentile, on six slap shots.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 225 at eighteen.
Top speed 22.0 mph, the 34th percentile; bursts 1.7 a game, the 79th; 1.95 miles a game, the 14th — a twelve-minute assignment, and the distance is the ice time.
He is already built like a professional and does not yet play like one below the goal line. The 33 penalty minutes in 39 games say he is willing; the shot chart says he has not learned where to be.
What the tracking says is that the acceleration is there at that size, which is the thing that cannot be taught.
The Intangibles
First overall in 2022, out of Slovakia, drafted at eighteen out of the Finnish league and in the NHL two months later.
47.3 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 34th percentile — a little to the defensive side, and not nearly enough to explain the 41.2 per cent.
This book records thirty-nine games and makes no projection from them. He was one of the youngest players in the league, on the club with the thirtieth-ranked chance generation, and he was on the ice for the worst of it. Nothing useful can be read out of that.
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.
- 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.
“Everything this book has found says the goals are inside forty feet and he is not going there yet.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 433 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.2%
- 6th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.1%
- 24th 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: 10 for, 19 against. Expected: 13.9 and 19.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 28 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 — 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, 2022-23 · 39 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 43rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.69 a game
- Distance
- 1.95 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.1 mph
- 83rd 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 · 433 minutes at five-on-five
- Jake Evans38%
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 41.2% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 433 minutes at five-on-five — 11th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Anderson | 45.0% | 38.0% | 43.8% |
| Christian Dvorak | 40.8% | 41.5% | 42.7% |
| Jake Evans | 48.0% | 38.4% | 45.5% |
45.0% together, 38.0% for him apart and 43.8% for Anderson apart. He was worse away from Anderson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Anderson did.
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
59 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.