This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Mark Friedman
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
Twenty-three penalty minutes in twenty-six games, and 319 minutes of five-on-five ice to judge it on.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | PHI | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 12:33 |
| 2019-20 | PHI | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 13:35 |
| 2020-21 | PHI/PIT | 9 | 2 | 1 | 3 | +1 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 22.2 | 11:03 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 26 | 1 | 4 | 5 | +1 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 27 | 3.7 | 13:17 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 42 | 3 | 6 | 9 | +1 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 39 | 7.7 | 12:50 |
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
26 games, 1 goal and 4 assists at 13:17 a night, plus-1, twenty-three penalty minutes, 27 shots. Eighty-sixth overall in 2014 by Philadelphia — the third round — four seasons, 42 games, 9 points.
Three hundred and nineteen minutes of five-on-five ice is well short of the five hundred this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
56.1 per cent of the expected goals across 319 minutes, which would be a top-fifteen figure at the position if there were enough of it to say so. There is not.
His ice went 13-13 against an expectation of 16.31-12.76 — three goals short in front, near-exact at the back.
Twenty-four per cent of his twenty-seven shots came from inside twenty feet, at a 46-foot median. For a defenceman that is an unusually forward shot chart and it comes off twenty-seven attempts.
He started 50.8 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end — ninety-nine against ninety-six, dead level, and below the two hundred starts this book needs to rank a man on deployment.
The Physical Game
Twenty-three penalty minutes in twenty-six games at 5-11 and 185 pounds. That is close to a minute a game from a seventh defenceman, and it is the one thing in the file that is unambiguous.
Forty-two NHL games across four calendar years have produced thirty-four penalty minutes, so it is not a one-season aberration either.
The Intangibles
21.8 mph top speed and 1.95 miles a game, the second of which is the 11th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers with forty games. Both figures are drawn from twenty-six games and a thirteen-minute shift, and neither is comparable to a full season.
The 89.5 mph shot is the 36th percentile — the only measurement here not obviously distorted by the sample.
He is 26 with forty-two NHL games across four seasons and two organisations. The possession share is interesting and unprovable, the penalty minutes are real, and 319 minutes is not a season. This is a seventh defenceman and the record does not yet contain an argument that he is more.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 319 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.1%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.6%
- 51st 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: 13 for, 13 against. Expected: 16.3 and 12.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 32 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 — 62 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 · 26 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 60th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.50 a game
- Distance
- 1.95 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.5 mph
- 33rd 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 90.4
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 · 319 minutes at five-on-five
- Juuso Riikolaoff the roster12%
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
- PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.1% — 2.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 319 minutes at five-on-five — 9th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chad Ruhwedel | 61.0% | 51.7% | 54.7% |
| Kasperi Kapanen | 59.8% | 54.5% | 52.9% |
| Danton Heinen | 57.3% | 55.6% | 57.8% |
61.0% together, 51.7% for him apart and 54.7% for Ruhwedel 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
38 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 58% from beyond forty.