This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kevin Bahl
New Jersey Devils Defense
Six-foot-six, 230 pounds, the 6th percentile in measured speed, and a chance share that came mostly from where he was started.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | NJD | 7 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 16:55 |
| 2021-22 | NJD | 17 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 6.3 | 15:45 |
| 2022-23 | NJD | 42 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +4 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 7.4 | 14:01 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 66 | 3 | 11 | 14 | -2 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 6.3 | 14:46 |
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
2 goals and 6 assists in 42 games — 8 points — at 14:01 a night. Plus-4, 27 shots, 35 penalty minutes.
57.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 95th percentile, across 554 minutes, with his ice at 24-20 against an expectation of 28.57-20.89.
Attach the deployment before reading that share as a verdict. He started 56.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 81st percentile: 196 attacking draws against 149. A third-pair defenceman handed the good end of the rink and 554 minutes of it should post a good share, and he did.
Three seasons, 66 games, 14 points.
The Finesse Game
27 shots at a median of 55 feet — the longest median on the club — and 76 per cent of them from beyond forty.
Twenty-six shots on goal all season and two goals.
17 slap shots out of 47 tracked attempts, which is 36 per cent of everything he throws. 95.3 mph at the 79th percentile, on that count, so the number means something.
There is nothing else. Six assists in forty-two games, and 11 in his career. He moves the puck to the nearest available man and the play starts with somebody else.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 230 pounds, with 35 penalty minutes.
Top speed 21.2 mph, the 6th percentile; 0.3 bursts a game, the 14th; 2.02 miles a game, the 17th. Bottom of the league in all three.
He is enormous and slow, and the game he plays around it is to stand in the lane and let the puck carrier run out of ice. In a fourteen-minute role against fourth lines that works.
He defends the front of his own net and is genuinely difficult to move off it, which at 230 pounds is not a surprise and is still the most valuable thing in the file.
The Intangibles
Fifty-fifth overall in 2018 to Arizona, and traded here at nineteen in the deal that sent Taylor Hall the other way.
Sixty-six games across three seasons, at twenty-three, on a club that has just finished third overall — which means the ice time has to be earned against men who are ahead of him.
What the file needs is a season of it. The size and the reach are real, the skating is at the bottom of the league, and 554 minutes at the 81st percentile of zone starts is not enough to know which of those two decides the career.
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 defends the front of his own net and is genuinely difficult to move off it, which at 230 pounds is not a surprise and is still the most valuable thing in the file.”
“He is enormous and slow, and the game he plays around it is to stand in the lane and let the puck carrier run out of ice.”
“Top speed 21.2 mph, the 6th percentile; 0.3 bursts a game, the 14th; 2.02 miles a game, the 17th. Bottom of the league in all three.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 554 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.8%
- 95th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.9%
- 90th 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: 24 for, 20 against. Expected: 28.6 and 20.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 83 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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 · 42 games
- Top speed
- 21.2 mph
- 33rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.33 a game
- Distance
- 2.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.3 mph
- 71st 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 · 554 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
- NJD took 56.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.8% — 1.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 554 minutes at five-on-five — 19th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damon Severson | 63.7% | 49.0% | 58.5% |
| Jack Hughes | 61.6% | 55.9% | 57.2% |
| Jesper Bratt | 60.4% | 56.7% | 58.3% |
63.7% together, 49.0% for him apart and 58.5% for Severson apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
46 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.