This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kyle Burroughs
San Jose Sharks Defense
Sixty-two penalty minutes in forty-eight games, and the first percentile of sprints.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | COL | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 10:05 |
| 2021-22 | VAN | 42 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -3 | 39 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 2.6 | 12:56 |
| 2022-23 | VAN | 48 | 2 | 3 | 5 | -4 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 4.3 | 17:22 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 95 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -6 | 106 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 89 | 3.4 | 15:01 |
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 3 assists in 48 games — 5 points — at 17:22 a night for Vancouver. Minus-4, 47 shots at 4.3 per cent, 62 penalty minutes.
49 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 746 minutes, the 35th percentile, with his ice at 21-28 against an expectation of 29.39-30.57 — eight goals short at the good end, which is a large shortfall on 746 minutes.
He started 51.2 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 52nd percentile, which is a neutral third-pair assignment.
62 penalty minutes in 48 games is the highest rate on this roster and the highest of his three seasons.
The Finesse Game
47 shots at a median of 53 feet, with 70 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 7 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty feet: 33 shots on goal and two goals — 6.06 per cent, above the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: ten shots and none. Inside twenty: four shots and none.
Forty-seven shots is not a sample and two goals from thirty-three is not a finding. Three goals in 95 career games is the more useful number.
59 tracked attempts, 13 of them slap shots. 86.7 mph at the 20th percentile, which is a soft shot for a defenceman and explains why the volume from the point is not larger.
The first pass is short and safe. He does not carry the puck and does not attempt the seam pass, which on a third pair is the correct decision every time.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 193 pounds, and this is where the file lives.
Top speed 20.9 mph — the 2nd percentile of the league — and 0.1 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game, the 1st. He covers 2.35 miles a night at the 35th percentile, so the ground gets covered at a walk.
That is the second defenceman in two chapters with a top speed in the bottom two per cent of the league, and both of them play seventeen minutes or more a night. It is a real archetype and it survives because the alternative to skating is position: take the inside lane, arrive early, and never be in a race.
He is nasty. 62 penalty minutes in 48 games and 106 in 95 career games is a rate almost nobody in this book carries, and it is not shot-blocking penalties: it is cross-checks at the net front and the fight afterwards.
He punishes people in front of his goaltender and accepts the four minutes as a cost of business.
The Intangibles
A hundred and ninety-sixth overall in 2013, the seventh round, three seasons, 95 games, 11 points across Colorado and Vancouver.
He was drafted in 2013 and did not hold an NHL job until 2021-22, at twenty-six, which for a seventh-round defenceman is the ordinary path and is completed by very few of the men who start on it.
He is twenty-eight, and what San Jose has bought is explicit: a heavy, slow, willing third-pair defenceman on a club that has to dress six every night and has no one else.
The honest ceiling is what the file already shows. What is not in doubt is the willingness.
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 is nasty.”
“He punishes people in front of his goaltender and accepts the four minutes as a cost of business.”
“It is a real archetype and it survives because the alternative to skating is position: take the inside lane, arrive early, and never be in a race.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 746 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 43rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.5%
- 34th 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: 21 for, 28 against. Expected: 29.4 and 30.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 48 games
- Top speed
- 20.9 mph
- 24th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.06 a game
- Distance
- 2.35 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.7 mph
- 23rd 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 with VAN · 746 minutes at five-on-five
- Quinn Hughes24%
- Christian Wolaninoff the roster19%
- Tyler Myers15%
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
- VAN took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 2.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 746 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elias Pettersson | 56.7% | 45.8% | 52.2% |
| Andrei Kuzmenko | 55.0% | 46.7% | 52.4% |
| J.T. Miller | 49.3% | 48.9% | 47.0% |
56.7% together, 45.8% for him apart and 52.2% for Pettersson 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
59 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 56 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.