Marc Staal

Eleven hundred and one games, and the 5th percentile of measured top speed at thirty-six.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2007-08	NYR	80	2	8	10	+2	42	0	0	0	78	2.6	18:48
2008-09	NYR	82	3	12	15	-7	64	0	0	1	96	3.1	21:08
2009-10	NYR	82	8	19	27	+11	44	0	0	2	78	10.3	23:08
2010-11	NYR	77	7	22	29	+8	50	4	2	2	116	6.0	25:44
2011-12	NYR	46	2	3	5	-7	16	1	0	0	61	3.3	19:54
2012-13	NYR	21	2	9	11	+4	14	1	0	0	20	10.0	24:27
2013-14	NYR	72	3	11	14	-1	24	1	0	0	92	3.3	20:32
2014-15	NYR	80	5	15	20	+18	42	0	0	0	97	5.1	21:08
2015-16	NYR	77	2	13	15	+2	36	0	0	1	65	3.1	19:41
2016-17	NYR	72	3	7	10	+9	34	0	0	0	70	4.3	19:11
2017-18	NYR	72	1	7	8	+11	18	0	0	0	68	1.5	18:32
2018-19	NYR	79	3	10	13	-9	32	0	0	0	84	3.6	19:25
2019-20	NYR	52	2	9	11	+5	16	0	0	0	46	4.3	17:39
2020-21	DET	56	3	7	10	-5	20	0	0	0	53	5.7	18:25
2021-22	DET	71	3	13	16	-1	28	0	0	1	76	4.0	17:25
2022-23	FLA	82	3	12	15	+10	43	0	0	0	55	5.5	18:12
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1101	52	177	229	+50	523	7	2	7	1155	4.5	20:07

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 12 assists in 82 games — 15 points — for Florida, at 18:12 a night. Plus-10, 55 shots, 43 penalty minutes.

51.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 64th percentile, with his ice at 62-55 against an expectation of 58.19-54.27 across 1,265 minutes.

He started 49.7 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 44th percentile — near-neutral deployment, and a share above fifty out of it at thirty-six.

Sixteen seasons, 1,101 games, 229 points.

The Finesse Game

55 shots at a median of 46 feet, and three goals.

Beyond forty: 30 shots on goal and 1 goal. From twenty to forty: 12 shots and 1 goal. Inside twenty: 11 shots and 1 goal.

Fifty-two goals in 1,101 career games. There has never been an offensive dimension to this file and the club is not buying one.

33 slap shots out of 102 tracked attempts — a 32 per cent share, and 49 wrist shots. 90.0 mph at the 44th percentile, which for a defenceman slapping a third of what he throws is a low reading and is what a thirty-six-year-old’s shot measures.

177 career assists. The outlet is short, early and correct, and it has been for sixteen years.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 208, with 43 penalty minutes.

Top speed 21.1 mph, the 5th percentile; 0.3 bursts a game, the 15th. 2.48 miles a game, the 40th.

Bottom twentieth of the league in outright speed at thirty-six, and eighteen minutes a night anyway. Everything defensive has to happen before the play arrives, and after sixteen seasons it mostly does.

He defends with reach, gaps and position, blocks shots, and is not beaten by anything he has already read.

When he is beaten it is decisive, because there is no recovery left at all. That is the risk the club is signing and it will not improve.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2005 to the Rangers, thirteen seasons there, then Detroit and Florida, and 1,101 games at thirty-six.

52 goals, 177 assists, and a career plus-50 that includes a plus-10 in his sixteenth season.

He is thirty-six on a rebuilding club with three defencemen under twenty-three on the roster. That is transparently the job, and unlike most veteran signings of this shape the underlying record last season was genuinely good.

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
21.2% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He defends with reach, gaps and position, blocks shots, and is not beaten by anything he has already read.”
edgeshe lacks it· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“When he is beaten it is decisive, because there is no recovery left at all.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“He is thirty-six on a rebuilding club with three defencemen under twenty-three on the roster.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,265 minutes

Expected goals: 51.7%; 65th pct
Shot attempts: 50.6%; 58th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 62 for, 55 against. Expected: 58.2 and 54.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

15th

Numbers

65th

The numbers rank him 50 points above where the report does. 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 57 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 21.1 mph; 31st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.34 a game
Distance: 2.48 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.0 mph; 40th 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

2022-23 with FLA · 1265 minutes at five-on-five

Brandon Montour67%
Aaron Ekblad8%
Matt Kierstedoff the roster8%

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: FLA took 53.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.7% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,265 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brandon Montour	50.5%	54.5%	54.7%
Carter Verhaeghe	53.6%	50.8%	56.4%
Matthew Tkachuk	61.0%	47.0%	60.3%

50.5% together, 54.5% for him apart and 54.7% for Montour 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

99 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.