Kevin Labanc

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

15 goals and 18 assists in 72 games — 33 points — at 14:20 a night. Minus-17, 129 shots at 11.6 per cent, two on the power play, 36 penalty minutes.

52.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 63rd percentile — the best chance share of any San Jose forward who played six hundred minutes — across 918 minutes, with his ice at 47-50 against an expectation of 41.45-37.94.

That expectation is the one worth reading twice: his ice generated six goals more than the chances predicted and conceded twelve more, which is the club’s season in miniature.

He started 51.2 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 52nd percentile.

The Finesse Game

129 shots at a median of 31 feet, which is the longest median of any forward in this chapter.

From twenty to forty feet: 56 shots on goal and ten goals — 17.86 per cent, against a league rate of 11.05. Inside twenty: 35 shots and six goals, 17.14, on the league forward rate of 17.71. Beyond forty: 39 shots and one goal.

That mid-slot figure is the file. Ten goals from the band where the league scores on one shot in nine is a rate almost nobody sustains, and it is worth about four goals of froth against the rate. But the distribution is real and repeated: he takes 46 per cent of his attempts from between twenty and forty feet, which is the highest share of any forward in this chapter, and he has scored that way before.

173 tracked attempts, 21 of them slap. 94.5 mph at the 75th percentile — a genuinely hard shot for a 5-11 winger, and it is the reason the mid-range shot goes in.

The release is quick and comes off the wrong foot. He shoots from the top of the circle without setting his feet, which is why the shot arrives from a distance the league says should not pay.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 185 pounds. 2.20 miles a game at the 24th percentile, at a top speed of 21.7 mph at the 22nd and 0.7 bursts above twenty a game at the 39th.

That is a low tracking line on every measure, and at 14:20 a night some of it is ice time and some of it is him. He is not fast, does not cover ground, and plays a stationary offensive game from the half-wall and the top of the circle.

36 penalty minutes in 72 games. He is not a physical player, and the defensive game is why a winger who once played 16:25 a night is now at 14:20.

What he does is find space without moving into it quickly, which works on the power play and is a harder sell at even strength.

The Intangibles

A hundred and seventy-first overall in 2014, the sixth round, seven seasons, 432 games, 216 points, all of them here.

The 56 points in 2018-19 at twenty-three is the season the file has been measured against, and the four years since read 33, 28, 6 and 33.

He is twenty-seven, which is old enough that the 2018-19 season is now the outlier rather than the promise. A sixth-round pick with 216 points in 432 games has had a good career by the standards of where he was taken.

The mid-slot shooting is the one genuinely distinctive thing in this file and it is worth watching whether it holds.