This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →
Justin Schultz
Seattle Kraken Defense
The 20th-most sprints of 192 defencemen and the 8th-fewest penalties drawn of 202, out of the softest chair on the roster.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-13 | EDM | 48 | 8 | 19 | 27 | -17 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 85 | 9.4 | 21:27 |
| 2013-14 | EDM | 74 | 11 | 22 | 33 | -22 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 109 | 10.1 | 23:21 |
| 2014-15 | EDM | 81 | 6 | 25 | 31 | -17 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 122 | 4.9 | 22:37 |
| 2015-16 | EDM/PIT | 63 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -15 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 4.9 | 18:27 |
| 2016-17 | PIT | 78 | 12 | 39 | 51 | +27 | 34 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 154 | 7.8 | 20:27 |
| 2017-18 | PIT | 63 | 4 | 23 | 27 | +22 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 109 | 3.7 | 19:31 |
| 2018-19 | PIT | 29 | 2 | 13 | 15 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 4.3 | 20:30 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 46 | 3 | 9 | 12 | -13 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86 | 3.5 | 19:52 |
| 2020-21 | WSH | 46 | 3 | 24 | 27 | +12 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 4.5 | 19:01 |
| 2021-22 | WSH | 74 | 4 | 19 | 23 | -15 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 92 | 4.3 | 16:55 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 602 | 57 | 207 | 264 | -38 | 136 | 13 | 0 | 11 | 953 | 6.0 | 20:17 |
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
74 games for Washington, 4 goals and 19 assists at 16:55 a night, minus-15, sixteen penalty minutes, 92 shots. Forty-third overall in 2008 by Anaheim, ten seasons, 602 games, 264 points.
The Finesse Game
0.95 even-strength points per 60 is the 50th percentile and twenty-two per cent of his points came on the power play off 1:26 a night at the 70th.
4.41 shots per 60 is the 50th percentile at 4.3 per cent, from a 49-foot median with thirteen per cent from the slot. 1.20 giveaways per 60 is the 14th percentile — a careful player with the puck.
51.7 per cent of the expected goals and 51.5 per cent of the attempts, both in the middle of the position, out of 58.8 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 77th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
That is the softest chair on this roster and one of the eighty softest in the league, and it is what makes the shares look ordinary rather than good. Four seconds a night short-handed is the 1st percentile at the position.
His ice went 45-51 against an expectation of 46.13-43.09.
The Physical Game
1.92 hits per 60 is the 13th percentile at 6-2 and 190 pounds, and 0.10 penalties drawn per 60 is the 8th-fewest of the 202 defencemen who played forty games.
Sixteen penalty minutes in seventy-four games, and 0.38 penalties taken per 60 at the 17th percentile. He is almost never in anything, at either end, in any direction.
The Intangibles
3.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 20th-most of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, on 8.71 miles per 60 at the 78th percentile.
Against a 22.3 mph top speed at only the 67th. He sprints far more often than he skates fast, which for a 32-year-old power-play defenceman is a shift-length reading as much as a stride one — he took the 21st-percentile workload at the position.
He is 32 with 602 games and 264 points, and the fifty-one he took in Pittsburgh in 2016-17 is comfortably his best season. The passing, the sprints and the puck security are three real things. The hitting, the penalty-killing and a chair among the eighty softest in hockey are why a man playing seventeen minutes a night has moved three times in six years.
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“3.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 20th-most of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, on 8.71 miles per 60 at the 78th percentile.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,173 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.7%
- 67th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.5%
- 69th 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: 45 for, 51 against. Expected: 46.1 and 43.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 24 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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, 2021-22 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 78th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.91 a game
- Distance
- 2.46 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.7 mph
- 81st 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 90.4
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
2021-22 with WSH · 1159 minutes at five-on-five
- Dmitry Orlov21%
- Matt Irwin10%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- WSH took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.7% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,173 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor van Riemsdyk | 50.7% | 52.7% | 51.1% |
| Alex Ovechkin | 51.0% | 52.0% | 48.5% |
| Evgeny Kuznetsov | 51.3% | 51.8% | 49.0% |
50.7% together, 52.7% for him apart and 51.1% for van Riemsdyk apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
136 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.