Matthew Highmore
St. Louis Blues Center
The 98th-percentile block rate and the 2nd-percentile giveaway rate, undrafted, at 12:42 a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | CHI | 13 | 2 | 0 | 2 | -4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 7.4 | 12:09 |
| 2019-20 | CHI | 36 | 2 | 4 | 6 | -1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 5.7 | 9:49 |
| 2020-21 | CHI/VAN | 42 | 3 | 4 | 7 | -5 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 40 | 7.5 | 11:38 |
| 2021-22 | VAN | 46 | 5 | 7 | 12 | +1 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 61 | 8.2 | 12:42 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 137 | 12 | 15 | 27 | -9 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 163 | 7.4 | 11:34 |
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
46 games for Vancouver, 5 goals and 7 assists at 12:42 a night, plus-1, fourteen penalty minutes, 61 shots. Undrafted, and 137 NHL games across four seasons out of it.
The Finesse Game
0.62 giveaways per 60 is the 2nd percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games — the 10th-fewest in the league — against 1.64 takeaways at the 52nd.
He does not lose the puck. Whether that is care or a refusal to carry it is not something the record can separate, and at 12:42 a night on a fourth line it is more likely the second.
42.6 per cent of the expected goals is the 6th percentile and 43.4 per cent of the attempts the 6th, out of 40.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 97th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
A hard chair and a possession share in the bottom seven per cent of the league, and the chair covers some of it.
6.27 shots per 60 is the 30th percentile at 8.2 per cent, from a 22-foot median with fifty-six per cent from the slot.
The Physical Game
3.90 blocks per 60 is the 98th percentile among forwards, at 5-11 and 192 pounds on a 12:42 shift.
4.21 hits per 60 is the 55th percentile and fourteen penalty minutes came out of forty-six games.
The Intangibles
22.1 mph is the 32nd percentile and 9.82 miles per 60 the 64th, against 5.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 52nd.
His shot is 85.5 mph, the 19th percentile.
He is 26, undrafted, with twenty-seven points in 137 NHL games across four seasons, and St Louis is his third club. The blocks, the giveaway ledger and the willingness to take a hard chair are three real things. Twelve career goals and a possession share in the bottom seven per cent are why a club that finished 26th in the league in attempt share is the one that took him.
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.
- 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.
“Undrafted, and 137 NHL games across four seasons out of it.”
“3.90 blocks per 60 is the 98th percentile among forwards, at 5-11 and 192 pounds on a 12:42 shift.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 526 minutes
- Expected goals
- 42.6%
- 8th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.4%
- 7th 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: 18 for, 16 against. Expected: 15.9 and 21.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 40 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 60 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 · 46 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 51st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.11 a game
- Distance
- 2.08 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.5 mph
- 42nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 with VAN · 526 minutes at five-on-five
- Juho Lammikkooff the roster70%
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
- VAN took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.6% — 6.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 526 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juho Lammikko | 47.2% | 32.9% | 40.8% |
| Tyler Motte | 48.6% | 35.4% | 48.4% |
| Tyler Myers | 40.5% | 43.8% | 50.6% |
47.2% together, 32.9% for him apart and 40.8% for Lammikko 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
77 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.