Martin Fehérváry

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

6 goals and 10 assists in 67 games — 16 points — at 20:00 a night. Minus-11, 91 shots at 6.6 per cent, 31 penalty minutes.

46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 24th percentile, across 1,197 minutes, with his ice at 45-56 against an expectation of 45.32-51.43 — five more goals allowed than the chances called for.

He started 40.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 13th percentile: 297 attacking draws against 443 defensive ones.

So the deployment is genuinely hard and the chance share is genuinely below average, and at twenty-three with three seasons behind him it is too early to say which of those is the player.

The Finesse Game

91 shots at a median of 44 feet, with 55 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 18 per cent from inside twenty — which is unusually close in for a defenceman.

Beyond forty feet: 39 shots on goal and no goals. From twenty to forty: 23 shots and three goals, 13.04 per cent, above the league rate for defencemen of 8.83. Inside twenty: 20 shots and three goals, 15.00 per cent.

124 tracked attempts, and only 10 of them are slap shots — an 8.1 per cent share, the lowest on this blue line — against 35 snap shots, a 28.2 per cent share. His shot is measured at 96.7 mph, the 87th percentile.

That is the profile of a defenceman who shoots hard without winding up, and thirty-nine long shots on goal produced nothing, which by now is what this book expects from anybody.

14 goals in 152 career games at 7.2 per cent, which is a good rate for a defenceman and comes from the twenty shots a season he takes from inside twenty feet.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 215 pounds, with 31 penalty minutes in 67 games and 63 in 152 career games.

A top speed of 24.2 mph — the 99th percentile, the third-fastest maximum of any skater in this book and the fastest of any defenceman in it. He records 1.5 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game, the 73rd percentile, on 2.70 miles a game at the 61st.

Only Ryan Poehling and Brayden Point reached a higher top speed last season, and neither of them plays defence — though Kaiden Guhle is three thousandths of a mile an hour behind him, which is not a distinction anybody should lean on.

He closes on a puck carrier faster than anybody at his position in this book, and against a rush that is the single most valuable athletic trait a defenceman can have.

He is punishing and finishes his checks, which at 215 pounds and that speed is a genuinely uncomfortable combination to play against.

What the tracking cannot tell you is why a defenceman with those feet and that willingness produced a 24th-percentile chance share, and the honest answer at twenty-three is reads: he arrives, and he is not always arriving in the right place.

The Intangibles

Forty-sixth overall in 2018, the second round, three seasons, 152 games, 34 points, all of them here.

14 goals and 20 assists, and a plus-2.

He is twenty-four, a Slovak second-round pick, and he has played twenty minutes a night against other clubs’ best lines for two seasons.

This is the most interesting young defenceman in the chapter and the numbers do not yet say he is good. The speed is exceptional and measured; the chance share is below average and measured; and the gap between them is the whole of what the next three seasons will settle.