This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Justin Barron
Montreal Canadiens Defense
A first-round pick who came the other way in the Artturi Lehkonen trade, and a 9th-percentile chance share.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | COL/MTL | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 7.7 | 17:11 |
| 2022-23 | MTL | 39 | 4 | 11 | 15 | -2 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 40 | 10.0 | 16:18 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 46 | 5 | 12 | 17 | -5 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 53 | 9.4 | 16:26 |
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 11 assists in 39 games — 15 points — at 16:18 a night, with one shorthanded goal. Minus-2, 40 shots at 10.0 per cent, 20 penalty minutes.
42.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 9th percentile, with his ice at 29-33 against an expectation of 19.75-26.98. Nine goals more at the offensive end than the chances deserved and six more against. Both ends ran hot, which on 580 minutes is what noise looks like.
Two seasons, 46 games, 17 points.
The Finesse Game
40 shots at a median of 48 feet, 6 per cent from inside twenty and 65 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 24 shots on goal, 1 goal. Inside forty: 15 shots, 3 goals, 20.00 per cent.
Fifteen shots is far too few to say anything about the finishing, and this book records the split without drawing from it.
90.3 mph at the 46th percentile, on nine slap shots.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 198, and twenty penalty minutes.
Top speed 22.4 mph, the 58th percentile; bursts 0.9 a game, the 49th; 2.32 miles a game, the 33rd. Average across the board, which for a twenty-one-year-old is neither good nor bad news.
He is not physical and the 9th-percentile chance share is at least partly what that costs on a club with no defensive structure to hide inside.
60.4 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 91st percentile — the softest deployment on the club, which makes the 9th-percentile chance share considerably worse.
The Intangibles
Twenty-fifth overall in 2020 to Colorado out of Halifax, and traded to Montreal at twenty in the Artturi Lehkonen deal.
He was a first-round pick, he came back for a useful forward on a Stanley Cup club, and he has forty-six NHL games. The 9th-percentile chance share is the number to watch and is not yet a verdict.
What this book would want is another eighty games at sixteen minutes before saying anything at all.
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
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 580 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.3%
- 9th pct
- Shot attempts
- 45%
- 17th 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: 29 for, 33 against. Expected: 19.8 and 27.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 25 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
- 22.4 mph
- 83rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.90 a game
- Distance
- 2.32 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.3 mph
- 41st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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 · 580 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
- MTL took 44.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.3% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 580 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Matheson | 45.0% | 41.0% | 45.0% |
| Joel Edmundson | 39.3% | 44.0% | 43.3% |
| Mike Hoffman | 37.9% | 43.9% | 45.5% |
45.0% together, 41.0% for him apart and 45.0% for Matheson apart. He was worse away from Matheson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Matheson 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
51 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.