Kevin Labanc

Thirty-eight point six per cent of the expected goals — the second percentile, and the worst mark on this roster.

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	SJS	72	15	18	33	-17	36	2	0	0	129	11.6	14:20
2023-24	SJS	46	2	7	9	-27	16	0	0	0	60	3.3	11:37
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	478	82	143	225	-88	217	13	0	15	885	9.3	14:24

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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 7 assists in 46 games for San Jose — 9 points at 11:37 a night, minus-27, on 60 shots at 3.33 per cent, and 16 penalty minutes.

38.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 496 minutes, the 2nd percentile — the worst mark on this roster by a distance. His ice went 9-36 against an expectation of 15.96-25.39 — four goals of scoring missing and ten conceded above expectation, in under five hundred minutes.

It was the worst season of a career that once produced 56 points.

The Finesse Game

60 attempts at a median of 35 feet, with 38 per cent from beyond 40 and 26 per cent from inside 20, converting at 3.33 per cent against a career 9.27.

143 career assists against 82 goals in 478 games — the passing has always been the better half, and he holds the puck and looks for the seam rather than shooting.

Two goals in forty-six games is not a shooting slump so much as a player no longer being given the ice where goals happen.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 185. He does not forecheck with force, he does not win pucks on the wall, and he avoids contact.

16 penalty minutes in 46 games and 217 in 478 for his career. He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

A hundred and seventy-first overall in 2014 — a sixth-round pick — out of Barrie, and 478 games and 225 points at 28 with a career minus-88, all of it in San Jose.

He was signed here in the summer. A sixth-round pick who plays 478 NHL games and scores 225 points has already beaten his draft position by a distance, and the second percentile of expected goals on the thirty-second-place club is where that career has arrived.

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
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
38.1% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**143 career assists against 82 goals in 478 games** — the passing has always been the better half, and he holds the puck and looks for the seam rather than shooting.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“**He does not forecheck with force, he does not win pucks on the wall, and he avoids contact.**”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“**He does not forecheck with force, he does not win pucks on the wall, and he avoids contact.**”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 496 minutes

Expected goals: 38.6%; 2nd pct
Shot attempts: 46.7%; 26th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 9 for, 36 against. Expected: 16.0 and 25.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

4th

Numbers

2nd

The two rank him within 2 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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, 2023-24 · 46 games

Top speed: 21.7 mph; 25th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.09 a game
Distance: 1.87 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.7 mph; 36th pct

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

2023-24 with SJS · 496 minutes at five-on-five

Ryan Carpenteroff the roster28%
Nico Sturm28%
Filip Zadinaoff 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, 2023-24

The club: SJS took 40.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 38.6% — 2.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 496 minutes at five-on-five — 17th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mario Ferraro	39.6%	38.0%	43.9%
Kyle Burroughs	33.9%	41.1%	45.4%
Ryan Carpenter	46.1%	35.2%	45.9%

39.6% together, 38.0% for him apart and 43.9% for Ferraro apart. Ferraro 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

84 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 26% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 38% from beyond forty.