This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Kevin Labanc
San Jose Sharks Right Wing
Twenty-one games and a 39-foot median shot, from a 183-point winger who has never played a whole season here.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | SJS | 55 | 8 | 12 | 20 | +9 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 70 | 11.4 | 13:41 |
| 2017-18 | SJS | 77 | 11 | 29 | 40 | -6 | 32 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 156 | 7.0 | 14:21 |
| 2018-19 | SJS | 82 | 17 | 39 | 56 | -1 | 36 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 130 | 13.1 | 14:01 |
| 2019-20 | SJS | 70 | 14 | 19 | 33 | -33 | 38 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 176 | 8.0 | 16:04 |
| 2020-21 | SJS | 55 | 12 | 16 | 28 | -9 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 128 | 9.4 | 16:25 |
| 2021-22 | SJS | 21 | 3 | 3 | 6 | -4 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 36 | 8.3 | 13:17 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 360 | 65 | 118 | 183 | -44 | 165 | 11 | 0 | 15 | 696 | 9.3 | 14:46 |
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
21 games, 3 goals and 3 assists at 13:17 a night, minus-4, six penalty minutes, 36 shots. One hundred and seventy-first overall in 2014 by San Jose — the sixth round — six seasons, 360 games, 183 points.
Two hundred and forty-one minutes of five-on-five ice is less than half the five hundred this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
One hundred and eighteen of his 183 career points are assists and the fifty-six he took in 2018-19 is comfortably his best season — thirty-nine of them assists, at 22 years old.
The shot chart from last season is the strangest thing in the file. A 39-foot median with forty-seven per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet and seventeen per cent from inside twenty. For a scoring winger that is a defenceman’s distribution, and it comes off thirty-six attempts in twenty-one games.
48.3 per cent of the expected goals across 241 five-on-five minutes, and his ice went 4-5 against an expectation of 7.09-7.59. Nine goals across a whole season on his ice is not a sample and the book will not pretend it is one.
He started 38.6 per cent of his even-strength ice in the offensive zone, the 6th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers — which on this roster is unremarkable, because five Sharks finished below the tenth.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 185 pounds, six penalty minutes in twenty-one games, and 165 across a 360-game career. There is nothing here to read at this size of sample.
The Intangibles
21.9 mph top speed and 0.9 bursts a game, both drawn from twenty-one games — a maximum scales with the number of shifts a man takes and he took very few.
2.09 miles a game is the 17th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking measures, which at 13:17 a night is the shift length.
His shot is 89.8 mph, the 38th percentile — the one figure a short season does not obviously distort.
He is 26 with 183 points in 360 games and has played more than seventy games twice. The assist record and one fifty-six-point season are the case for him. Twenty-one games, a thirty-nine-foot median and three seasons of declining point totals since 2018-19 are why a club that finished 22nd is not counting on him.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 241 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.3%
- 41st pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.7%
- 19th 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: 4 for, 5 against. Expected: 7.1 and 7.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 22 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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 · 21 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 39th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.90 a game
- Distance
- 2.09 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.8 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 241 minutes at five-on-five
- Jasper Weatherbyoff the roster41%
- Matt Nieto38%
- Nick Bonino33%
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
- SJS took 47.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.3% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 241 minutes at five-on-five — 4th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jasper Weatherby | 56.9% | 42.2% | 40.0% |
| Erik Karlsson | 49.8% | 47.2% | 51.9% |
| Mario Ferraro | 46.4% | 49.5% | 45.9% |
56.9% together, 42.2% for him apart and 40.0% for Weatherby 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
47 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 47 feet. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 47% from beyond forty.