This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Luke Schenn
Nashville Predators Defense
The third-slowest measured skater in the league, and eighty-eight per cent of his shots from beyond forty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-09 | TOR | 70 | 2 | 12 | 14 | -12 | 71 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 102 | 2.0 | 21:32 |
| 2009-10 | TOR | 79 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +2 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 101 | 5.0 | 16:53 |
| 2010-11 | TOR | 82 | 5 | 17 | 22 | -7 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 128 | 3.9 | 22:22 |
| 2011-12 | TOR | 79 | 2 | 20 | 22 | -6 | 62 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 2.5 | 16:02 |
| 2012-13 | PHI | 47 | 3 | 8 | 11 | +3 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 3.7 | 21:52 |
| 2013-14 | PHI | 79 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 0 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 5.1 | 16:32 |
| 2014-15 | PHI | 58 | 3 | 11 | 14 | -2 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 4.5 | 18:04 |
| 2015-16 | PHI/LAK | 72 | 4 | 12 | 16 | -2 | 82 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 76 | 5.3 | 17:34 |
| 2016-17 | ARI | 78 | 1 | 7 | 8 | -9 | 85 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 1.1 | 18:03 |
| 2017-18 | ARI | 64 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -12 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 59 | 1.7 | 16:23 |
| 2018-19 | ANA/VAN | 26 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -10 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 0.0 | 13:55 |
| 2019-20 | TBL | 25 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -8 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 3.2 | 12:27 |
| 2020-21 | TBL | 38 | 2 | 2 | 4 | +2 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 4.7 | 10:45 |
| 2021-22 | VAN | 66 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +15 | 61 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 78 | 6.4 | 17:13 |
| 2022-23 | VAN/TOR | 70 | 4 | 18 | 22 | +8 | 84 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 4.9 | 16:21 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 933 | 42 | 149 | 191 | -38 | 764 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1130 | 3.7 | 17:35 |
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
4 goals and 18 assists in 70 games — 22 points — with 84 penalty minutes, split between Vancouver and Toronto. Plus-8, 16:21 a night, 81 shots.
Twenty-two points equals his career high, set in 2010-11 and matched in 2011-12, and it arrived at thirty-three on a third pair.
45.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 23rd percentile, with his ice at 50-47 against an expectation of 39.64-47.75 — ten goals better at the offensive end than the chances deserved, which on a third pair across two clubs is percentages.
Fifteen seasons, 933 games, 191 points, and eight organisations.
The Finesse Game
81 shots at a median of 58 feet, 4 per cent from inside twenty and 88 per cent from beyond forty — the most perimeter shot distribution recorded anywhere in this edition.
Beyond forty: 66 shots on goal and 4 goals, 6.06 per cent. Inside forty: 11 shots and no goals.
Eleven shots from inside forty feet across seventy games. He does not leave the blue line, ever, and 32 of his 117 tracked attempts were slap shots — which is part of why, like Josi and Barrie, the long ones went in at twice the league rate, and a smaller part than it looks.
88.5 mph at the 33rd percentile.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 225, and 84 penalty minutes in 70 games.
Top speed 20.4 mph — the third-slowest measured skater in the entire league among those who played forty games. Bursts 0.06 a game, the sixth-fewest. 2.11 miles a game, the 20th percentile.
There is no way to soften those numbers and no need to. He is a fifteen-year defenceman who is now among the slowest men in the sport, and clubs keep signing him because of what he does when the puck is already near him.
He hits everything, clears his crease, blocks shots and fights, and 84 penalty minutes in seventy games from a sixteen-minute defenceman is the record of a man doing that on every shift.
The Intangibles
Fifth overall in 2008 to Toronto, and then Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Arizona, Anaheim, Vancouver, Tampa Bay, Toronto again and Nashville.
Two Stanley Cups in Tampa Bay, both of them as a third-pair defenceman brought in for exactly this.
He is thirty-three, and the honest projection is that the speed has already crossed the line where a club can hide it against a good forecheck. What Nashville has bought is the room, the penalty kill and the crease.
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
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
88.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 100 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.0%, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
“He hits everything, clears his crease, blocks shots and fights, and 84 penalty minutes in seventy games from a sixteen-minute defenceman is the record of a man doing that on every shift.”
“He hits everything, clears his crease, blocks shots and fights, and 84 penalty minutes in seventy games from a sixteen-minute defenceman is the record of a man doing that on every shift.”
“He hits everything, clears his crease, blocks shots and fights, and 84 penalty minutes in seventy games from a sixteen-minute defenceman is the record of a man doing that on every shift.”
“Two Stanley Cups in Tampa Bay, both of them as a third-pair defenceman brought in for exactly this.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,032 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.4%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.6%
- 15th 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: 50 for, 47 against. Expected: 39.6 and 47.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 20.4 mph
- 15th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.06 a game
- Distance
- 2.11 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.5 mph
- 32nd 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 · 843 minutes at five-on-five
- Quinn Hughes54%
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
- TOR took 54.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 9.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,032 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quinn Hughes | 43.6% | 46.6% | 52.9% |
| Elias Pettersson | 57.2% | 41.4% | 51.7% |
| Andrei Kuzmenko | 54.8% | 42.4% | 52.3% |
43.6% together, 46.6% for him apart and 52.9% for Hughes 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
113 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 60 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 88% from beyond forty.