This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →
Kale Clague
Buffalo Sabres Defense
A 42.4 per cent chance share across two organisations, and a fourth club at twenty-four.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | LAK | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 14:34 |
| 2020-21 | LAK | 18 | 0 | 6 | 6 | -6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 0.0 | 17:12 |
| 2021-22 | LAK/MTL | 36 | 2 | 8 | 10 | -10 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 7.7 | 16:44 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 58 | 2 | 14 | 16 | -19 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 3.9 | 16:44 |
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
With Montreal. 2 goals and 8 assists in 36 games — 10 points at 16:44 a night, minus-10, on 26 shots and 20 penalty minutes.
42.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 514 minutes, the 8th percentile among defencemen — on the club that finished 32nd. His ice went 13-22 against an expectation of 18.47-25.12: five and a half goals of scoring that the chances said should have arrived and did not, and three fewer conceded than they predicted.
Five hundred and fourteen minutes on the worst team in hockey is a difficult place to be measured from, and 42.4 is a poor number even allowing for it.
The Finesse Game
26 attempts at a median of 47 feet and two goals. 14 assists against 2 goals in 58 career games is the shape of a puck-mover who has not yet moved anything at this level.
He was drafted as an offensive defenceman and has produced 16 points in 58 NHL games across three organisations.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 190, and 20 penalty minutes in 36 games. Neither big nor physical, and the record does not suggest he compensates: the tracking gives a 21.6 mph top speed and 0.4 bursts above 20 mph a game, both near the bottom of the position.
The Intangibles
Fifty-first overall in 2016 by Los Angeles, claimed on waivers by Montreal, and now with a third organisation at twenty-four.
He is 24. A left-shot defenceman on his fourth club before twenty-five is usually a player whose skill is real and whose defending is not, and Buffalo has claimed him for the same reason everybody else did — because at that age the puck-moving might still turn into something and the cost of finding out is nothing.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“14 assists against 2 goals in 58 career games is the shape of a puck-mover who has not yet moved anything at this level”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 514 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.4%
- 8th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.9%
- 15th 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: 13 for, 22 against. Expected: 18.5 and 25.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 51 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 · 36 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 53rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.42 a game
- Distance
- 2.44 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.4 mph
- 44th 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 MTL · 368 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, 2021-22
- The club
- MTL took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.4% — 3.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 514 minutes at five-on-five — 19th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Wideman | 45.7% | 41.3% | 47.9% |
| Brett Kulak | 48.2% | 40.6% | 52.6% |
| Nick Suzuki | 40.6% | 42.7% | 45.9% |
45.7% together, 41.3% for him apart and 47.9% for Wideman apart. He was worse away from Wideman, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Wideman did.
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
30 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.