Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

4

Neal Pionk

Winnipeg Jets Defense

Undrafted, and 183 career assists in 467 games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18NYR2811314-112000541.822:23
2018-19NYR7362026-16352011324.521:10
2019-20WPG7163945+10323011773.423:23
2020-21WPG5432932+6201001003.021:58
2021-22WPG7733134+5461011402.121:08
2022-23WPG82102333-12441021427.021:56
2023-24WPG8252833+9631011463.420:50
2024-25 so far
Career46734183217+12529068913.821:44

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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, 5 goals and 28 assists for 33 points, 1 on the power play, 63 penalty minutes, 20:50 a night and plus-9, with 1 game-winner. He took 49.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,399 minutes, the 46th percentile, and his ice went 59-52 against an expectation of 53.42-55.18.

Six goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and three goals of goaltending above them. Forty-nine point two per cent of the chances is the lowest share of the four defencemen who played twelve hundred minutes, and the plus-9 is the smallest of them too.

The Finesse Game

197 attempts at a median of 54 feet with 77 per cent of them from beyond forty and 8 per cent from inside twenty, 136 of those on goal, converted at 3.4 per cent against a career 3.82 across 891 shots.

183 career assists against 34 goals in 467 games. He shoots from the point often and it almost never goes in; the value is in the outlet pass and in a right-handed shot that can run a second unit, and 45 points in 2019-20 is the high-water mark of it.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 190 and took 63 penalty minutes.

252 career penalty minutes in 467 games. He is small for a defenceman and plays as though he is not, finishing checks and cross-checking men out of the crease; sixty-three penalty minutes is what that costs a 190-pound defenceman every year.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, seven seasons, and Winnipeg is his second organisation.

A career plus-1 in 467 games from a man nobody drafted. He reached the league at 22 out of college, has played all 82 games twice in five seasons here, and took twenty and a half minutes a night last season.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,399 minutes

Expected goals
49.2%
47th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.5%
51st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 52 against. Expected: 53.4 and 55.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
84th
Numbers
47th

The report ranks him 37 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1399 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2023-24

The club
WPG took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.2% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,399 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brenden Dillon46.8%53.8%58.2%
Mark Scheifele42.7%52.8%53.0%
Mason Appleton50.4%48.8%51.5%

46.8% together, 53.8% for him apart and 58.2% for Dillon apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

197 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.