Justin Schultz
Seattle Kraken Defense
Thirty-four points from the third pair, and a slap-shot share of a third that returned the league rate exactly.
| 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 | SEA | 73 | 7 | 27 | 34 | +4 | 40 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 98 | 7.1 | 17:47 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 675 | 64 | 234 | 298 | -34 | 176 | 14 | 0 | 15 | 1051 | 6.1 | 20:01 |
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
7 goals and 27 assists in 73 games — 34 points — at 17:47 a night. Plus-4, 98 shots at 7.1 per cent, one on the power play, four game-winners, 40 penalty minutes.
34 points is his best total since the 51 he recorded in Pittsburgh in 2016-17.
49.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,111 minutes, the 45th percentile — the lowest of Seattle’s six regular defencemen — with his ice at 49-40 against an expectation of 41.86-42.09.
He started 54.7 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 70th percentile.
The Finesse Game
98 shots at a median of 51 feet, with 66 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty.
Beyond forty feet: 65 shots on goal and two goals — 3.08 per cent, which is the league rate for defencemen of 3.17 almost exactly. From twenty to forty: 19 shots and three goals, 15.79. Inside twenty: 11 shots and two goals.
130 tracked attempts, 44 of them slap shots — a 33.8 per cent share, the highest on this blue line and among the highest of any defenceman in this book.
And he lands on the positional rate. The defencemen this book has measured on the same pair of numbers now run from 0.00 per cent to 9.45 with no relationship to the share at all. Schultz is the one who lands exactly where the average is, which is the least remarkable and most representative outcome available.
95.7 mph at the 82nd percentile. The 27 assists are where the value is: he moves the puck up quickly and runs a power play competently.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 190 pounds. Top speed 21.5 mph at the 15th percentile, 0.6 bursts above twenty a game at the 29th, 2.54 miles a game at the 45th.
A slow tracking line at thirty-two and a light frame, and the two together are the reason the defensive record has never been the good half of this file.
40 penalty minutes in 73 games and 176 in 675 career games — a low rate, and it comes from a defenceman who does not engage rather than one who is never beaten.
He is not physical and does not defend by contact. The game is played with the stick and with an early retreat, and against a forecheck that arrives with weight he gives up the puck.
The Intangibles
Forty-third overall in 2008, the second round, eleven seasons, 675 games, 298 points across Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Washington and Seattle.
234 assists against 64 goals, and two Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh. The 51-point season in 2016-17 is the peak and the four seasons before this one produced 15, 12, 27 and 23.
He is thirty-three, on a third pair with the attacking-end starts, and 34 points is exactly what that role should produce from a puck-mover.
The minus-34 for a career is mostly four seasons in Edmonton and should be discounted; the 45th-percentile chance share last season should not be.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“He is not physical and does not defend by contact.”
“The 27 assists are where the value is: he moves the puck up quickly and runs a power play competently.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,111 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.9%
- 51st pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.6%
- 58th 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: 49 for, 40 against. Expected: 41.9 and 42.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 points of one another. 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.
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 — 68 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 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 48th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.59 a game
- Distance
- 2.54 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.7 mph
- 75th 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 · 1111 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
- SEA took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,111 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jamie Oleksiak | 51.1% | 48.8% | 52.2% |
| Carson Soucy | 48.6% | 50.6% | 52.6% |
| Jordan Eberle | 50.5% | 49.5% | 53.7% |
51.1% together, 48.8% for him apart and 52.2% for Oleksiak 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
127 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.