Keaton Middleton
Colorado Avalanche Defense
6-6 and 240 pounds, 41 games, 2 points, and no pretence about which of those three matters.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | COL | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 9:18 |
| 2024-25 | COL | 41 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 0.0 | 11:29 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 44 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -1 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 0.0 | 11:20 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
0 goals and 2 assists in 41 games, even, on 11:29 a night — the smallest defenceman workload on the club.
50.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 58th percentile, over 397 minutes, and on-ice goals of 11-11. In third-pair minutes behind a very good team, none of that should be read as evidence of anything — and they were not sheltered minutes: 41.4 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 17th percentile.
The Finesse Game
There is essentially none. 44 shots and no goals, 85 per cent of his attempts from beyond 40 feet, and a first pass that is safe and slow. He gets the puck to the nearest available forward and that is the entire offensive contribution.
What he does well is defend without the puck: he closes a lane with reach rather than with feet, and he does not chase.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 240, one of the largest men in the league, and it is the whole job. He clears the crease, he ends board battles by arriving, and forwards do not go to the net front against him twice.
28 penalty minutes in 41 games. He plays right at the line and occasionally over it.
The Intangibles
An eighth-round sort of career — years of the American League, a first real NHL season at 26 — and no illusions attached to it. He knows exactly what he is for.
On a blue line with Makar, Toews, Girard and Malinski, all of whom are small or unwilling in the paint, there is a genuine role for one man who is neither. The question is whether a club that wants to play at this pace can carry a defenceman who cannot skate with it.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
85.3% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“he closes a lane with reach rather than with feet, and he does not chase”
“He clears the crease, he ends board battles by arriving, and forwards do not go to the net front against him twice.”
“he ends board battles by arriving”
“He plays right at the line and occasionally over it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 397 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 73rd 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: 11 for, 11 against. Expected: 13.7 and 13.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 54 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2024-25 · 41 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 36th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.17 a game
- Distance
- 1.61 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.8 mph
- 58th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 397 minutes at five-on-five
- Sam Malinski32%
- Calvin de Haanoff the roster28%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- COL took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 2.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 397 minutes at five-on-five — 11th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logan O'Connor | 48.8% | 51.3% | 53.9% |
| Sam Malinski | 36.4% | 56.9% | 51.4% |
| Ross Colton | 50.4% | 50.7% | 54.5% |
48.8% together, 51.3% for him apart and 53.9% for O'Connor apart. O'Connor 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
68 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 0 of them goals. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 85% from beyond forty.