This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →

Patrick Maroon

The slowest measured forward in the league, and the most penalty minutes in it.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2011-12	ANA	2	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	1	0.0	12:33
2012-13	ANA	13	2	1	3	-1	10	0	0	0	21	9.5	9:47
2013-14	ANA	62	11	18	29	+11	101	1	0	3	93	11.8	12:19
2014-15	ANA	71	9	25	34	-5	82	1	0	1	120	7.5	14:17
2015-16	ANA/EDM	72	12	15	27	-7	88	5	0	1	104	11.5	12:20
2016-17	EDM	81	27	15	42	+13	95	3	0	5	178	15.2	16:44
2017-18	EDM/NJD	74	17	26	43	+1	73	1	0	4	141	12.1	16:32
2018-19	STL	74	10	18	28	-3	64	2	0	3	118	8.5	14:10
2019-20	TBL	64	9	14	23	+4	71	1	0	1	80	11.3	12:25
2020-21	TBL	55	4	14	18	+2	60	2	0	0	46	8.7	11:36
2021-22	TBL	81	11	16	27	+20	134	3	0	0	102	10.8	12:24
2022-23	TBL	80	5	9	14	-5	150	0	0	0	62	8.1	10:21
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	729	117	171	288	+30	930	19	0	18	1066	11.0	13:19

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

5 goals and 9 assists in 80 games — 14 points — with 150 penalty minutes, the most in the league. Minus-5, 10:21 a night, 62 shots, with Tampa Bay.

One hundred and fifty penalty minutes from ten minutes a night is a rate of nearly two minors a game.

49.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 48th percentile, with his ice at 22-27 against an expectation of 31.86-32.44 — ten goals short at the offensive end, which is a fourth line on a club that shoots the puck at the goaltender.

Twelve seasons, 729 games, 288 points.

The Finesse Game

62 shots at a median of 19 feet, 54 per cent from inside twenty and 10 per cent from beyond forty.

Beyond forty: 6 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 55 shots, 5 goals.

Six long shots in eighty games. Everything he puts on net comes from the paint, because the paint is where he stands, and 58 of his 98 tracked attempts were wrist shots taken from arm’s length.

80.3 mph at the 2nd percentile. He took five slap shots all year, so the measurement is largely recording his choices; nothing about his game has ever run through the shot.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 234, and 150 penalty minutes.

Top speed 20.5 mph. Among skaters who played forty games last season, only three registered a lower maximum, and all three are defencemen — he is the slowest measured forward in the league. Bursts 0.07 a game, eighth-fewest in the league. 1.61 miles a game, the 2nd percentile.

There is no version of these numbers that flatters him and none is needed. He stands in front of the goaltender, he takes the cross-checks, he fights, and he is impossible to move. At 234 pounds and 20.5 mph that is the only thing left, and three consecutive Stanley Cups say clubs value it.

He has taken more than a hundred penalty minutes in three seasons, and the last two of them are the last two.

The Intangibles

One hundred and sixty-first overall in 2007, four seasons in the minors, and an NHL debut at twenty-three.

50.1 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 46th percentile.

Three Stanley Cups in three straight years, one with St. Louis and two with Tampa Bay, is a record almost nobody in this book can match, and this book has no metric that explains it. What it can measure is a thirty-five-year-old fourth-line winger with fourteen points and the slowest skating in the league.

Minnesota signed him for a year. Both of those descriptions are true at once and the club has decided which one matters.

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.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
67.0% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He stands in front of the goaltender, he takes the cross-checks, he fights, and he is impossible to move.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He stands in front of the goaltender, he takes the cross-checks, he fights, and he is impossible to move.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“He has taken more than a hundred penalty minutes in three seasons, and the last two of them are the last two.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 819 minutes

Expected goals: 49.5%; 48th pct
Shot attempts: 51%; 61st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 27 against. Expected: 31.9 and 32.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

20th

Numbers

48th

The numbers rank him 28 points above where the report does. 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 20.5 mph; 5th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.07 a game
Distance: 1.61 miles a game
Hardest shot: 80.3 mph; 19th pct

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 with TBL · 819 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, 2022-23

The club: TBL took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.5% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 819 minutes at five-on-five — 41st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ross Colton	53.0%	46.8%	49.5%
Victor Hedman	47.3%	50.7%	50.6%
Nicholas Paul	47.5%	50.5%	50.7%

53.0% together, 46.8% for him apart and 49.5% for Colton apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

97 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.