Mark Borowiecki

Nashville Predators Defense

The most hits, the most penalties taken and the most penalties drawn of all 202 qualified defencemen, and the most penalty minutes in the league.

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

2011-12	OTT	2	0	0	0	-1	2	0	0	0	1	0.0	12:30
2012-13	OTT	6	0	0	0	+1	18	0	0	0	1	0.0	13:00
2013-14	OTT	13	1	0	1	-2	48	0	0	0	6	16.7	12:35
2014-15	OTT	63	1	10	11	+15	107	0	0	0	30	3.3	15:55
2015-16	OTT	63	1	1	2	-4	107	0	0	0	27	3.7	14:38
2016-17	OTT	70	1	2	3	-3	154	0	0	0	50	2.0	14:01
2017-18	OTT	52	3	8	11	-6	64	0	0	0	66	4.5	14:39
2018-19	OTT	53	1	4	5	-12	89	0	0	0	59	1.7	15:34
2019-20	OTT	53	7	11	18	+1	58	0	1	0	63	11.1	17:56
2020-21	NSH	22	0	1	1	-2	38	0	0	0	18	0.0	13:41
2021-22	NSH	57	0	4	4	-9	151	0	0	0	45	0.0	13:07
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	454	15	41	56	-22	836	0	1	0	366	4.1	14:53

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

57 games, 0 goals and 4 assists at 13:07 a night, minus-9, 151 penalty minutes. One hundred and thirty-ninth overall in 2008 by Ottawa, eleven seasons, 454 games, 56 points, 836 career penalty minutes.

One hundred and fifty-one penalty minutes is the most in the league, in fifty-seven games. Patrick Maroon was second with 134 in eighty-one.

The Finesse Game

There is none and the file says so bluntly. 0.37 even-strength points per 60 is the 4th-lowest of the 595 skaters who played forty games. Forty-five shots, no goals, no power-play time at all.

3.61 shots per 60 is the 29th percentile from a 49-foot median. 1.12 giveaways per 60 is the 9th percentile, which is the one column he wins by not doing anything with it.

50.6 per cent of the expected goals and 48.2 per cent of the attempts on 40.3 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 94th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. His ice went 19-29 against an expectation of 24.16-23.6.

The Physical Game

15.74 hits per 60 is the most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, and 151 penalty minutes in fifty-seven games is the most in the league. Radko Gudas is second at 15.36.

2.97 penalties taken per 60 is the most of the 202 and it is not close: Niko Mikkola is second at 1.70. He takes seventy-five per cent more penalties per hour than the next defenceman in the league.

2.33 penalties drawn per 60 is also the most of the 202, and also not close — Nick Seeler is second at 1.49. He is in more infractions in both directions than any defenceman in hockey, and the net comes out at minus-0.64, the 8th percentile.

6.34 blocks per 60 is the 12th-most of the 202, at 13:07 a night.

The Intangibles

21.8 mph is the 44th percentile, 2.8 bursts per 60 the 81st, 8.07 miles per 60 the 13th percentile. He does not cover ground and he is not slow in a burst.

He is 33, born in Ottawa and drafted by Ottawa, where he spent nine seasons. This is a complete and unambiguous identity: the league’s most-penalized skater, its most physical defenceman, and a man who scored no goals on forty-five shots.

Nashville took more short-handed minutes than any club in the league, and carried the defenceman who took more penalties per hour than any other. The report cannot pretend those two facts are unrelated, and it cannot say from here how much of the first is the second.

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
40% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“15.74 hits per 60 is the most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, and 151 penalty minutes in fifty-seven games is the most in the league.”
takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is
“2.97 penalties taken per 60 is the most of the 202 and it is not close: Niko Mikkola is second at 1.70.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“6.34 blocks per 60 is the 12th-most of the 202, at 13:07 a night.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 649 minutes

Expected goals: 50.6%; 60th pct
Shot attempts: 48.2%; 39th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 29 against. Expected: 24.2 and 23.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

22nd

Numbers

60th

The numbers rank him 38 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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 · 57 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 62nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.61 a game
Distance: 1.76 miles a game
Hardest shot: 92.6 mph; 52nd 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

2021-22 · 649 minutes at five-on-five

Matthew Benningnow SJS52%
Philippe Myersnow TBL19%
Matt Tennysonoff 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, 2021-22

The club: NSH took 49.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 649 minutes at five-on-five — 28th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Benning	53.9%	47.7%	48.1%
Yakov Trenin	49.6%	51.0%	49.6%
Mikael Granlund	51.0%	50.5%	49.3%

53.9% together, 47.7% for him apart and 48.1% for Benning apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

62 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 0 of them goals. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.