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

Juraj Slafkovský

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

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	MTL	82	20	30	50	-19	55	6	0	2	152	13.2	17:56
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	121	24	36	60	-32	88	7	0	2	194	12.4	16:05

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.

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.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-3 and 225 and very difficult to move off a puck.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and there is a more punishing version of him available that has not appeared yet.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and there is a more punishing version of him available that has not appeared yet.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He protects the puck on the wall and finds the middle from there, and the passing is further along than the scoring.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,205 minutes

Expected goals: 48.7%; 44th pct
Shot attempts: 47.7%; 33rd pct

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

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

44th

The 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 652 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 78th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.04 a game
Distance: 2.73 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.3 mph; 60th pct

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 · 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

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cole Caufield	49.9%	44.8%	46.0%
Nick Suzuki	49.9%	46.1%	49.9%
Mike Matheson	48.3%	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.