Marcus Pettersson

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

1 goal and 23 assists in 68 games — 24 points — at 20:35 a night. Plus-4, 96 shots at 1.0 per cent, 58 penalty minutes, no power-play points.

55.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 85th percentile and the best share on the club’s blue line, across 1,245 minutes. His ice finished 56-56 against an expectation of 65.18-53.00 — nine goals short at the good end and three over at the other, which is a nine-goal swing against him on a club whose finishing was the worst in the league.

He started 48.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 40th percentile, which is the most balanced usage among Pittsburgh’s top four.

The Finesse Game

96 shots at a median of 51 feet, with 75 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty, a share only Chad Ruhwedel and Pierre-Olivier Joseph exceed on this roster.

Inside twenty feet: eight shots on goal, no goals. From twenty to forty: nineteen shots, one goal. Beyond forty: sixty-six shots on goal and no goals at all. Ninety-three shots on goal in a season and one of them went in.

That is a 1.08 per cent shooting percentage against a career 2.5. Of the defencemen in this book who put eighty or more shots on goal, only Erik Johnson, Tyler Myers and Erik Gudbranson finished lower.

And the slap shot did not help him either. He slaps 51 of his 149 tracked attempts — 34.2 per cent, the highest share on this blue line, ahead of Letang’s 32.9 and Karlsson’s 31.7 — and the return from beyond forty feet was zero from sixty-six. Three men, one defence corps, slap shares within three points of each other, and conversion rates of 9.45, 2.75 and 0.00 per cent.

This is the third time in one chapter that the shot type has failed to predict anything, and 95.3 mph at the 80th percentile says the puck leaves his stick hard. Where it is going from, and what is standing in front of it, is what this book cannot see.

The Physical Game

6-5 and listed at 174 pounds, which even allowing for the listing is a very thin frame for a man playing twenty minutes against top lines.

Top speed 21.5 mph, the 12th percentile, and 0.1 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game — the 3rd. He covers 2.83 miles a night at the 69th, so the ground gets covered; it is never covered quickly.

He defends with his stick and his reach, and the length is the whole method: he takes the lane away rather than the man, and the low burst count is a direct consequence of never having to chase.

58 penalty minutes in 68 games is high for a defenceman who does not hit, and most of it is stick work — the tax on defending from a stick’s length rather than from body position.

The Intangibles

Thirty-eighth overall in 2014, six seasons, 362 games, 103 points, five of those seasons here.

Ten career goals in 362 games. The offence has never existed and never will, and the club has used him correctly: 20:35 a night, the toughest of the balanced assignments, and a chance share in the 85th percentile.

He is twenty-seven and the youngest of the four defencemen Pittsburgh plays above eighteen minutes. On a roster this old that is worth more than the twenty-four points.