Justin Holl

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

69 games, 3 goals and 20 assists at 20:12 a night, plus-14, forty-one penalty minutes, 64 shots. One of the three came short-handed and none on the power play. Fifty-fourth overall in 2010 by Chicago — the second round — five seasons, 205 games, 64 points.

The Finesse Game

2.75 shots per 60 is the 13th-fewest of all 202 defencemen who played forty games — sixty-four attempts across sixty-nine games at twenty minutes a night. TJ Brodie is 5th-fewest on the same blue line.

Seventeen per cent of his attempts came from the slot at the 83rd percentile, off a 51-foot median. When he shoots it is from the right place and he almost never does.

53.3 per cent of the expected goals is the 77th percentile and 52.1 per cent of the attempts the 72nd, out of 47.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 245th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — the second-hardest chair on this blue line.

2.41 giveaways per 60 is the 84th percentile against 0.77 takeaways at the 42nd, which is the same complaint the whole Toronto blue line invites: Rielly, Muzzin, Liljegren and Holl are all at or above the 82nd percentile, and Brodie the 75th.

0.98 even-strength points per 60 is the 56th percentile and none of his twenty-three points came on the power play — four seconds a night.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 194 pounds, and 5.55 hits per 60 at the 71st percentile with 4.48 blocks at the 61st.

Forty-one penalty minutes in sixty-nine games and 0.82 penalties taken per 60 at the 67th percentile against 0.34 drawn.

The Intangibles

2:28 a night short-handed is the 78th percentile among defencemen, on a club that finished 4th in the league on the kill.

8.72 miles per 60 is the 83rd percentile, against a 21.5 mph top speed at the 26th and 1.4 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 47th.

A great deal of ground covered slowly. His shot is 90.3 mph, the 15th percentile — which, at sixty-four attempts, is not a number that ever comes up.

He is 30, a second-round pick who did not hold an NHL job until 26, with sixty-four points in 205 games. Twenty minutes a night, the kill, a hard chair and a 77th-percentile chance share out of it are the case. Sixty-four shots, a soft one, and a giveaway rate in the top sixth of the position are what the club weighs against it.