Luke Glendening

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

3 goals and 3 assists in 70 games — 6 points — at 12:04 a night for Dallas. Minus-9, 65 shots at 4.6 per cent, two shorthanded, 50 penalty minutes.

Six points in seventy games is the lowest full-season total of a ten-year career, and two of the three goals came shorthanded.

44.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 673 minutes, the 14th percentile, with his ice at 10-22 against an expectation of 20.82-25.60 — eleven goals short at the good end, which is the largest shortfall on this roster.

He started 34.5 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 6th percentile: 131 attacking draws against 249 defensive ones.

Ten goals for on 673 minutes is a remarkable number in its own right, and it is the arithmetic of a fourth-line checking centre on a good club: he is on the ice to prevent, not to produce.

The Finesse Game

65 shots at a median of 22 feet.

Inside twenty feet: 26 shots on goal and three goals — 11.54 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 25 shots and none. Beyond forty: 13 shots and none.

All three goals from inside twenty feet, and thirty-eight shots on goal from outside it produced nothing. 69 goals in 706 career games at an 8.3 per cent shooting percentage.

108 tracked attempts, 26 of them tip-ins — a 24.1 per cent share, the sixth-highest of the 477 forwards in this book who took a hundred attempts — and 19 backhands. One slap shot.

86.1 mph at the 16th percentile. The shot is soft, almost never taken from distance, and the goals come from standing in front of the goaltender.

The faceoff is the job. A ten-year career of 12-minute nights and 148 points exists because he wins the draw that starts a defensive-zone shift, and six career shorthanded goals say what happens when the other club loses one.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 190 pounds, with 2.0 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 86th percentile on 1.86 miles a game at the 10th, at a top speed of 22.7 mph, the 75th.

He sprints constantly in twelve minutes of ice time, which is what a checking centre’s tracking line looks like when he is doing it properly.

50 penalty minutes in 70 games and 259 in 706 career games. He finishes checks and blocks shots, and at 190 pounds against centres much larger than him the contact is a choice rather than an advantage.

He kills penalties on the first unit and has done for a decade.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, ten seasons, 706 games, 148 points across Detroit and Dallas.

69 goals and 79 assists in ten years. An undrafted centre out of college who has played seven hundred NHL games on faceoffs and penalty-killing is one of the more unlikely careers in this book.

He is thirty-four, joining a club that has won two of the last four and needs somebody to take the hard draws behind Anthony Cirelli.

The 14th-percentile chance share is what the role costs and the 6th percentile of zone starts is why. Neither is a criticism.