Nate Schmidt

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

77 games, 4 goals and 28 assists at 20:13 a night, minus-4, ten penalty minutes, 117 shots, one power-play goal. Undrafted, and 527 games, 149 assists and a career plus-77 across nine seasons out of it.

The Finesse Game

Four goals from 117 shots is 3.4 per cent, and 4.51 shots per 60 is the 52nd percentile from a 53-foot median with five per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet, the 6th percentile. He does not go in, ever.

His shot is 99.9 mph, the 17th-hardest of the 192 tracked defencemen, which sits oddly beside four goals and is the single most interesting pair of numbers in the file.

0.87 even-strength points per 60 is the 40th percentile and thirty-four per cent of his points came on the power play, off 1:40 a night.

49.2 per cent of the expected goals is the 47th percentile and 50.2 per cent of the attempts the 54th, out of 56.6 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 135th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a soft chair producing level shares.

His ice went 48-60 against an expectation of 56.84-58.68 — nearly nine short in front and a goal and a half more against. The third Winnipeg skater in this chapter whose minutes went badly short of expectation at the attacking end.

2.54 giveaways per 60 is the 24th-most of the 202.

The Physical Game

0.193 penalties taken per 60 is the 7th-fewest of all 202 defencemen, and ten penalty minutes came out of seventy-seven games.

1.43 hits per 60 is the 12th-fewest of the same 202 and 4.01 blocks per 60 the 47th percentile, against 0:39 a night short-handed at the 17th.

A net of plus 0.19 penalties per 60 is the 91st percentile — he draws more than he gives away, which almost no defenceman does.

6-0 and 197 pounds, and ninety-eight penalty minutes across 527 career games.

The Intangibles

22.7 mph is the 26th-fastest of the 192 tracked defencemen, against 1.7 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 55th percentile and 8.36 miles per 60 at the 36th.

High top end, ordinary sprints, below-average ground covered, which is a shape that turns up again and again in this book among defencemen whose legs are better than their minutes.

He is 31, undrafted out of Minnesota, with 187 points in 527 games and a career plus-77 accumulated almost entirely in Washington and Vegas. The discipline is genuine and rare and the shot is among the hardest at the position. Nine goals short of expectation in front and a 47th-percentile chance share are what a third club in three seasons looks like from the inside.