This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kaiden Guhle
Montreal Canadiens Defense
A 24.2 mph top speed at twenty-one, at 20:31 a night, and a minus-19.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | MTL | 44 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -19 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 8.3 | 20:31 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 44 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -19 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 8.3 | 20:31 |
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 14 assists in 44 games — 18 points — at 20:31 a night as a rookie. Minus-19, 48 shots, 27 penalty minutes.
Twenty and a half minutes a night at twenty-one on a club that finished thirtieth in the league in chance generation is a heavy first assignment, and the minus-19 is what it produced.
42.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 8th percentile, with his ice at 30-45 against an expectation of 24.94-34.27. Five goals better at the offensive end than the chances and eleven worse at the defensive.
He missed thirty-eight games.
One season, 44 games, 18 points.
The Finesse Game
48 shots at a median of 42 feet, 13 per cent from inside twenty and 55 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 28 shots on goal, 2 goals, 7.14 per cent. Inside forty: 19 shots, 2 goals.
Forty-eight shots is a small enough body of work that nothing can be concluded from the rates, and this book records them without drawing anything from them.
94.0 mph at the 71st percentile, on five slap shots.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 202, and 27 penalty minutes in 44 games.
Top speed 24.2 mph, the 99th percentile — the second-fastest defenceman in the league, three thousandths of a mile an hour behind Martin Fehervary, and only two forwards registered higher. Bursts 1.8 a game, the 82nd; 2.98 miles a game, the 79th.
That is the best set of skating readings on any Montreal player and among the best in the book. A 6-3 defenceman who moves at that speed is the archetype every club is trying to draft.
He defends aggressively, steps up at the blue line and takes the body, and at twenty-one he is beaten badly when he is wrong. The eleven-goal defensive gap is the price of learning at twenty minutes a night.
The Intangibles
Sixteenth overall in 2020 out of Prince Albert, and a rookie season played almost entirely on the second pair.
44.4 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 25th percentile — a hard share, given to a twenty-one-year-old on a rebuilding club.
This book will not hold the minus-19 against him and will hold the 8th-percentile chance share lightly, because both are also a description of the club. What is his own is 24.2 mph at 6-3, and there are not many of those.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
20.3% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“A 6-3 defenceman who moves at that speed is the archetype every club is trying to draft.”
“He defends aggressively, steps up at the blue line and takes the body, and at twenty-one he is beaten badly when he is wrong.”
“The eleven-goal defensive gap is the price of learning at twenty minutes a night.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 757 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.1%
- 9th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.5%
- 10th 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: 30 for, 45 against. Expected: 24.9 and 34.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 74 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 — 74 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 · 44 games
- Top speed
- 24.2 mph
- 100th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.82 a game
- Distance
- 2.98 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.0 mph
- 62nd 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 · 757 minutes at five-on-five
- David Savard48%
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 42.1% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 757 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Savard | 40.8% | 43.4% | 44.5% |
| Joel Edmundson | 39.4% | 43.6% | 43.5% |
| Nick Suzuki | 40.2% | 43.0% | 44.3% |
40.8% together, 43.4% for him apart and 44.5% for Savard apart. Savard was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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
64 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 55% from beyond forty.