Kyle Clifford
Toronto Maple Leafs Left Wing
Nine hundred and three penalty minutes in 751 games, and four points in twenty-five at 8:48 a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | LAK | 76 | 7 | 7 | 14 | -10 | 141 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 69 | 10.1 | 9:30 |
| 2011-12 | LAK | 81 | 5 | 7 | 12 | -5 | 123 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 88 | 5.7 | 9:24 |
| 2012-13 | LAK | 48 | 7 | 7 | 14 | +1 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 56 | 12.5 | 10:36 |
| 2013-14 | LAK | 71 | 3 | 5 | 8 | +6 | 81 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 74 | 4.0 | 10:10 |
| 2014-15 | LAK | 80 | 6 | 9 | 15 | +5 | 87 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 117 | 5.1 | 10:44 |
| 2015-16 | LAK | 56 | 3 | 6 | 9 | -1 | 55 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 68 | 4.4 | 9:21 |
| 2016-17 | LAK | 73 | 6 | 6 | 12 | -2 | 92 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 122 | 4.9 | 10:43 |
| 2017-18 | LAK | 50 | 6 | 4 | 10 | -4 | 48 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 7.4 | 10:33 |
| 2018-19 | LAK | 72 | 11 | 10 | 21 | +4 | 96 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 115 | 9.6 | 10:29 |
| 2019-20 | LAK/TOR | 69 | 7 | 10 | 17 | -7 | 68 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 110 | 6.4 | 11:11 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 50 | 4 | 3 | 7 | -5 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 65 | 6.2 | 9:56 |
| 2021-22 | STL/TOR | 25 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -5 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 3.5 | 8:48 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 751 | 66 | 77 | 143 | -23 | 903 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 994 | 6.6 | 10:11 |
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
25 games between St Louis and Toronto, 1 goal and 3 assists at 8:48 a night, minus-5, thirty-one penalty minutes, 29 shots. Thirty-fifth overall in 2009 by Los Angeles — the second round — twelve seasons, 751 games, 143 points.
Two hundred and fifteen 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 goal from twenty-nine shots, from a 28-foot median with thirty-eight per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet.
42.5 per cent of the expected goals across 215 five-on-five minutes, and he started 64.2 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end — sixty-one against thirty-four.
That combination is the least encouraging pair of numbers a fourth-line forward can post: the softest chair on the roster and the lowest chance share on it.
His ice went 8-13 against an expectation of 6.57-8.90, so the goals against ran four above the model on a sample of twenty-one.
The Physical Game
Thirty-one penalty minutes in twenty-five games at 8:48 a night, and 903 across a 751-game career.
That is a career average of 1.20 penalty minutes a game across twelve seasons, and 143 points to set against it.
6-2 and 218 pounds.
The Intangibles
1.49 miles a game is the 1st percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers with forty games, and he played twenty-five. At 8:48 a night that figure is the shift length rather than the skater, and it is quoted to describe the role rather than to rank him.
21.9 mph top speed and 0.9 bursts a game, both drawn from twenty-five games, and a 89.9 mph shot.
He is 31, with 143 points and 903 penalty minutes in 751 games across twelve seasons. Twelve NHL seasons in a role the league has been shrinking for all twelve of them is the case, and the record contains nothing else. Four points, twenty-five games and the softest chair on the roster producing the worst chance share on it are why the role is nearly gone.
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
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.
“Thirty-one penalty minutes in twenty-five games at 8:48 a night, and 903 across a 751-game career.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 215 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.5%
- 8th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.1%
- 46th 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: 8 for, 13 against. Expected: 6.6 and 8.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 35 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 — 59 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 · 25 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 40th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.92 a game
- Distance
- 1.49 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.9 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 · 194 minutes at five-on-five
- Jason Spezzaoff the roster48%
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
- TOR took 54.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.5% — 12.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 215 minutes at five-on-five — 2nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Spezza | 40.0% | 44.5% | 53.4% |
| Wayne Simmonds | 35.8% | 46.6% | 50.2% |
| Morgan Rielly | 49.1% | 39.1% | 53.3% |
40.0% together, 44.5% for him apart and 53.4% for Spezza apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
34 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.