Armchair Hockey Scout Beta
4

Justin Holl

St. Louis Blues Defense

Eight points in 73 games in Detroit, and a right-shot seventh defenceman signed in the summer.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18TOR2202+500012100.017:22
2018-19TOR11011-5200060.012:29
2019-20TOR6821618+1343000892.318:31
2020-21TOR5521820+1625001573.521:04
2021-22TOR6932023+1441011644.720:12
2022-23TOR8021618+1539001603.320:14
2023-24DET38055+822000140.015:05
2024-25DET73268-716000414.914:48
2025-26 so far
Career396138295+591880143333.918:19

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

2 goals and 6 assists in 73 games for Detroit — 8 points at 14:48 a night, minus-7, with 16 penalty minutes.

Eight points in 73 games is the least productive full season of his career, and he was a healthy scratch for stretches of it on a club that missed the playoffs by five points.

The Finesse Game

41 attempts and 2 goals in 73 games. There is nothing here: 95 points in 396 career NHL games.

The first pass is functional and he does not hold the puck. Under a forecheck he goes off the wall, which is the correct choice and it is the only one he has.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 194 and light for the height. He defends with his reach rather than with force and he does not clear the front of his own net.

16 penalty minutes in 73 games is a low rate. He is not beaten badly enough to foul often and he is not physical when he is.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick of Chicago in 2010 who did not play a full NHL season until he was 26, after five years in the minor leagues and a season in the ECHL.

396 games and a career plus-59. He is 33 and St. Louis signed him in the summer as a right-shot seventh defenceman, which is exactly what he is.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 948 minutes

Expected goals
51.5%
67th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.8%
62nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 35 against. Expected: 36.2 and 34.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
7th
Numbers
67th

The numbers rank him 60 points above where the report does. 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 637 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with DET · 948 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, 2024-25

The club
DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 948 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Erik Gustafsson52.3%50.3%48.1%
Alex DeBrincat53.3%50.8%50.8%
Vladimir Tarasenko50.1%52.2%46.2%

52.3% together, 50.3% for him apart and 48.1% for Gustafsson apart. Gustafsson was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Gustafsson than for him.

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

77 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 67 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.