Mattias Janmark

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

9 goals and 16 assists in 67 games for Vegas — 25 points and a plus-3 at 14:21 a night, the 39th percentile among forwards. 1:11 a night short-handed is the 64th percentile.

51.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 850 minutes, the 65th percentile — but 48.7 per cent of the attempts, the 37th. The gap is the shape of a third-liner whose shifts produce fewer shots and better ones.

His ice went 31-35 against an expectation of 37.05-34.45 — six fewer goals for than the chances promised.

The Finesse Game

67 per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 21st-highest of the 393 qualified forwards, at a median of 19 feet, the 45th-closest. He shoots from the paint or not at all.

77.9 mph is the 3rd-softest recorded shot of the 365 qualified forwards, behind Paul Stastny and Derek Ryan — who is now his team-mate. Edmonton will dress two of the three softest shots in the league on the same fourth line.

5.56 shots per 60 is the 19th percentile and nine goals on 89 shots is 10.1 per cent, the 38th.

Not one of his twenty-five points came on the power play. 1.56 even-strength points per 60 is the 35th percentile.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 205. 1.19 hits per 60 is the 8th percentile among forwards — almost no contact at all, at 205 pounds.

23.2 mph is the 46th-fastest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, which is genuinely quick, against 6.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 at the 62nd percentile and 9.29 miles per 60 at the 20th. He has a high gear he uses rarely and covers very little ground the rest of the time.

0.56 penalties taken per 60 is the 39th percentile — twenty-one minutes in sixty-seven games.

The Intangibles

Seventy-ninth overall in 2013, the third round, and 420 NHL games at 29 with 158 points across four organisations.

The record is remarkably flat: twenty-one to thirty-four points a season at fourteen to seventeen minutes, six times over, with a season missed entirely in between. Nobody has ever asked him for more and he has never given less.

Edmonton is buying a penalty-killing third-line winger who does not shoot, does not hit and does not score on the power play. What he does is go to the slot and drive at speed, and on a club whose fourth line already covers more ground than anybody’s, that is a consistent idea about how to play.