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

Phillip Di Giuseppe

Two hundred and thirty-one games across seven seasons and four clubs, and a call-up that worked.

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

2015-16	CAR	41	7	10	17	0	18	0	0	1	68	10.3	14:16
2016-17	CAR	36	1	6	7	-12	15	0	0	1	68	1.5	12:18
2017-18	CAR	49	5	8	13	0	17	0	0	1	64	7.8	10:30
2018-19	CAR/NSH	24	1	3	4	-3	8	0	0	0	31	3.2	10:08
2019-20	NYR	20	1	3	4	+1	2	0	0	0	35	2.9	11:17
2020-21	NYR	31	1	7	8	+2	13	0	0	0	44	2.3	11:06
2022-23	VAN	30	6	6	12	-1	14	0	0	0	71	8.5	14:34
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	231	22	43	65	-13	87	0	0	3	381	5.8	12:05

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

6 goals and 6 assists in 30 games — 12 points — at 14:34 a night. Minus-1, 71 shots at 8.5 per cent, 14 penalty minutes.

Six goals in thirty games, from a man who had scored sixteen in his previous two hundred and one.

53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 388 minutes, the 77th percentile — the best of any forward on this roster — with his ice at 16-18 against an expectation of 16.71-14.35.

Three hundred and eighty-eight minutes is a quarter of a season and this book will not build a projection on a percentile from it.

He started 44 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 24th percentile: 88 attacking draws against 112 defensive ones. Hard starts, in short spells.

The Finesse Game

71 shots at a median of 25 feet, with 42 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty.

Inside twenty feet: 30 shots on goal and five goals — 16.67 per cent, just below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 27 shots and one goal, 3.70 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 13 shots and none.

Seventy shots on goal in thirty games is a real rate — better than two a night from a fourth-line winger — and it is the most interesting thing in the file. He shoots far more than his ice time suggests he should.

85 tracked attempts, 52 of them wrist shots and six wrap-arounds, which is a great many for thirty games. 93.7 mph at the 69th percentile, which is a harder shot than the record implies.

22 goals in 231 career games at 5.8 per cent. The career rate is the honest one and the 8.5 last season is a thirty-game number.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 193 pounds, with 14 penalty minutes in 30 games and 87 in 231 career games.

Top speed 22.5 mph at the 63rd percentile, 1.6 bursts above twenty a game at the 76th, and 2.36 miles a game at the 35th.

Above average on the two that measure effort and below on the one that measures ice time, which is the standard shape of a fourth-line call-up.

He forechecks hard, which is the reason he keeps getting recalled, and at 193 pounds without top-end speed it is the only version of the job available.

He is not a punishing forward and does not fight. The physical value is in arriving on time and finishing the check that is already there.

The Intangibles

Thirty-eighth overall in 2012, the second round, seven seasons, 231 games, 65 points across Carolina, Nashville, the Rangers and Vancouver.

22 goals and 43 assists, and a minus-13.

He is twenty-nine, a second-round pick who has never had a full NHL season in eleven years since the draft, and last season was the best thirty games of his career.

Files like this one are why this book covers every man on the roster. Nobody is going to write about a twenty-nine-year-old with sixty-five career points, and Vancouver got twelve points and a 77th-percentile chance share in thirty games out of him.

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
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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
53.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 46.3% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.5, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard, which is the reason he keeps getting recalled, and at 193 pounds without top-end speed it is the only version of the job available.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is not a punishing forward and does not fight.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 388 minutes

Expected goals: 53.8%; 80th pct
Shot attempts: 51.5%; 66th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 18 against. Expected: 16.7 and 14.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

48th

Numbers

80th

The numbers rank him 32 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 — 65 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 · 30 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 69th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.60 a game
Distance: 2.36 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.7 mph; 86th 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 · 388 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: VAN took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 6.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 388 minutes at five-on-five — 10th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
J.T. Miller	53.9%	53.4%	45.3%
Brock Boeser	50.7%	60.3%	42.4%
Tyler Myers	49.2%	56.6%	44.0%

53.9% together, 53.4% for him apart and 45.3% for Miller apart. Miller was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Miller 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

83 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.