Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

20

Juraj Slafkovský

Montreal Canadiens Left Wing

First overall in 2022, 82 games at 19, and half his attempts from inside twenty feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23MTL394610-1333100429.512:13
2023-24MTL82203050-195560215213.217:56
2024-25 so far
Career121243660-328870219412.416:05

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

All 82 games, 20 goals and 30 assists for 50 points, 6 on the power play, 55 penalty minutes, 17:56 a night and minus-19. He took 48.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,205 minutes, the 43rd percentile, and his ice went 54-53 against an expectation of 55.18-58.05.

Level with the chances at one end and five fewer conceded than they called for at the other. Fifty points at 19 in a second season, after ten in the first.

The Finesse Game

228 attempts at a median of 20 feet, half of them from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty, converted at 13.2 per cent against a career 12.37.

36 career assists in 121 games. That shot chart is the whole report: a 6-3, 225-pound winger who has worked out where his goals come from. He protects the puck on the wall and finds the middle from there, and the passing is further along than the scoring.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 225 and very difficult to move off a puck.

55 penalty minutes in 82 games at 19 is an ordinary rate. He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and there is a more punishing version of him available that has not appeared yet.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2022 out of Kosice, two seasons, 121 games, and 60 points.

He turned 20 in the last week of last season. First overall picks are judged early and unfairly; ten points in thirty-nine games, then fifty in eighty-two, is the shape of a player arriving on time.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,205 minutes

Expected goals
48.7%
44th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.7%
33rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 53 against. Expected: 55.2 and 58.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
85th
Numbers
44th

The report ranks him 41 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 379 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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

2023-24 · 1205 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
MTL took 46.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.7% — 2.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,205 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Cole Caufield49.9%44.8%46.0%
Nick Suzuki49.9%46.1%49.9%
Mike Matheson48.3%49.1%41.9%

49.9% together, 44.8% for him apart and 46.0% for Caufield apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

228 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.