Morgan Rielly

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

82 games, 10 goals and 58 assists at 23:44 a night, plus-16, forty penalty minutes, 221 shots. Two of the ten came on the power play. Fifth overall in 2012 by Toronto, nine seasons, 654 games, 373 points.

The Finesse Game

Sixty-eight points is the 5th-largest total on the club and by far the largest from a defenceman, and 1.60 even-strength points per 60 is the 95th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games.

6.81 shots per 60 is the 93rd percentile at 4.5 per cent, from a 46-foot median at the 12th percentile with fifteen per cent of his attempts from the slot. He shoots a great deal from a long way out and scored ten.

Thirty-four per cent of his points came on the power play, the 82nd percentile, off 2:54 a night at the 92nd.

53.1 per cent of the expected goals is the 75th percentile and 53.7 per cent of the attempts the 83rd, out of 52.5 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 252nd-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

2.34 giveaways per 60 is the 82nd percentile — high, and every Toronto defenceman is in that band.

The Physical Game

2.68 blocks per 60 is the 4th percentile among defencemen — the 11th-fewest of the 202 — at 6-1 and 219 pounds, against 2.84 hits at the 33rd.

Forty penalty minutes in eighty-two games and 0.28 penalties drawn per 60 at the 27th percentile.

There is almost nothing physical in this file at twenty-four minutes a night.

The Intangibles

3.4 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 92nd percentile among defencemen, against a 22.6 mph top speed at the 83rd.

8.69 miles per 60 is the 77th percentile and his shot is 99.0 mph at the 86th.

Fast, frequently at speed, covering ground, and a hard shot — four measurements above the position’s middle, which is what a 68-point defenceman should look like and often does not.

He is 28, with 373 points in 654 games across nine seasons, and the sixty-eight is a career high by sixteen. The production, the workload and the skating are the case and it is a strong one. The blocks, the hits and a career minus-13 across nine years are what a club is buying against, and neither the record nor this book can say how much of that is his.