This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Morgan Barron
Winnipeg Jets Center
Six foot four, the ninth percentile of zone starts, and no goals from beyond twenty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | NYR | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 33.3 | 13:41 |
| 2021-22 | NYR/WPG | 27 | 2 | 3 | 5 | -4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 6.1 | 9:48 |
| 2022-23 | WPG | 70 | 8 | 13 | 21 | +4 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 112 | 7.1 | 13:15 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 102 | 11 | 16 | 27 | -1 | 41 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 148 | 7.4 | 12:21 |
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
8 goals and 13 assists in 70 games — 21 points — at 13:15 a night. Plus-4, 112 shots at 7.1 per cent, one shorthanded, 31 penalty minutes.
21 points is a career high by sixteen, in his third season.
52.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 806 minutes, the 66th percentile, with his ice at 24-25 against an expectation of 34.39-31.09 — ten fewer goals scored than the chances called for, which is one of the two largest shortfalls on this roster.
He started 36.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 9th percentile: 147 attacking draws against 252 defensive ones.
A 66th-percentile chance share out of the ninth percentile of starts is a genuinely good fourth-line season, and twenty-one points is what it produced.
The Finesse Game
112 shots at a median of 21 feet, with 41 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside twenty feet: 56 shots on goal and eight goals — 14.29 per cent, below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 39 shots and no goals. Beyond forty: 14 shots and none.
Every goal came from inside twenty feet and fifty-three shots on goal from further out produced nothing.
150 tracked attempts, 94 of them wrist shots and only three slap. 91.2 mph at the 52nd percentile.
11 goals in 102 career games at 7.4 per cent. The shot is not the file and the hundred and twelve shots are: a fourth-line centre taking a shot and a half a game from twenty-one feet is doing the volume part of the job properly.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 220 pounds, with 31 penalty minutes in 70 games and 41 in 102 career games.
2.2 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 90th percentile and a top speed of 23.2 mph, the 90th, on 2.13 miles a game at the 21st, which is thirteen minutes of ice time.
That is a genuinely fast man of six foot four, and on a checking line taking defensive-zone starts it is the most valuable thing in the file.
He forechecks at speed and finishes his checks, and at 220 pounds arriving that quickly he is a difficult forward to receive a pass in front of.
He wins pucks along the wall with his reach, which is what a long fourth-line centre is for.
He is not a punishing hitter for his size and the 41 career penalty minutes say the physical game is positional rather than aggressive.
The Intangibles
A hundred and seventy-fourth overall in 2017, the sixth round, three seasons, 102 games, 27 points across the Rangers and Winnipeg.
11 goals and 16 assists, and a minus-1.
He is twenty-four, a sixth-round pick who reached the league at twenty-two.
A sixth-round pick who is a functional fourth-line centre at twenty-four, taking the ninth percentile of starts and holding a 66th-percentile chance share, has already had a better career than the pick suggested. The speed at that size is the thing to watch.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“He forechecks at speed and finishes his checks, and at 220 pounds arriving that quickly he is a difficult forward to receive a pass in front of.”
“He wins pucks along the wall with his reach, which is what a long fourth-line centre is for.”
“He is not a punishing hitter for his size and the 41 career penalty minutes say the physical game is positional rather than aggressive.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 806 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.5%
- 71st pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 50th 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: 24 for, 25 against. Expected: 34.4 and 31.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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, 2022-23 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 23.2 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.24 a game
- Distance
- 2.13 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.2 mph
- 74th 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 806 minutes at five-on-five
- Adam Lowry56%
- Karson Kuhlmanoff the roster22%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- WPG took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.5% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 806 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Lowry | 51.6% | 53.8% | 54.6% |
| Neal Pionk | 43.7% | 58.7% | 50.4% |
| Josh Morrissey | 49.4% | 54.4% | 51.9% |
51.6% together, 53.8% for him apart and 54.6% for Lowry apart. Lowry was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
147 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.