This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Rasmus Sandin
Toronto Maple Leafs Defense
The 2nd-fewest penalties taken of 202 defencemen, and the 2nd-softest shot of 192, at 5-11.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | TOR | 28 | 1 | 7 | 8 | -7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 22 | 4.5 | 14:19 |
| 2020-21 | TOR | 9 | 0 | 4 | 4 | +6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 14:40 |
| 2021-22 | TOR | 51 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 46 | 10.9 | 16:58 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 88 | 6 | 22 | 28 | +8 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 77 | 7.8 | 15:53 |
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
51 games, 5 goals and 11 assists at 16:58 a night, plus-9, four penalty minutes, 46 shots and three game-winners. Twenty-ninth overall in 2018 by Toronto, three seasons, 88 games, 28 points.
The Finesse Game
57.7 per cent of the expected goals is the 97th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games and 54.8 per cent of the attempts the 87th.
Both need the club beside them. Toronto finished 6th in the league in attempt share and 5th in chances, and Sandin started 53.3 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 231st-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a mildly soft chair on a club that held the puck.
Twenty-one per cent of his attempts came from the slot at a 44-foot median, the 97th percentile among defencemen.
Five goals from forty-six shots is 10.9 per cent, the 98th percentile, off 3.19 shots per 60 at the 16th. He almost never shoots and when he does he has walked in.
The Physical Game
0.14 penalties taken per 60 is the 2nd-fewest of all 202 defencemen — four penalty minutes in fifty-one games, and fourteen across an eighty-eight-game career.
6.10 hits per 60 is the 76th percentile at 5-11 and 189 pounds, against 2.71 blocks at the 6th percentile.
The Intangibles
8.84 miles per 60 is the 90th percentile among defencemen, against a 22.1 mph top speed at the 56th and 1.0 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 29th.
A great deal of ground covered and almost none of it at speed. For a 5-11 defenceman that is the opposite of the profile the position usually rewards, and nothing in the record measures his edges, his pivots or how he escapes pressure — which is the half a small defenceman lives on.
His shot is 85.9 mph, the 2nd-softest of the 192 defencemen the tracking measures.
He is 22, twenty-ninth overall in 2018, with twenty-eight points in eighty-eight games. The discipline, the shot chart, the ground covered and a 97th-percentile chance share at 22 are four real things. The softest shot but one at the position, the 6th-percentile block rate and eighty-eight games in three years are why the club is still deciding.
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
21.3% of his attempts in the slot, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 51, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.7% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 54.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +3.6, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“Twenty-one per cent of his attempts came from the slot at a 44-foot median, the 97th percentile among defencemen.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 787 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.7%
- 96th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.8%
- 87th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 38 for, 31 against. Expected: 39.3 and 28.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 22 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2021-22 · 51 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 70th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.27 a game
- Distance
- 2.50 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.9 mph
- 20th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 · 787 minutes at five-on-five
- Justin Holl17%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- TOR took 54.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.7% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 787 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| William Nylander | 56.8% | 58.1% | 54.7% |
| John Tavares | 56.8% | 58.1% | 53.3% |
| Timothy Liljegren | 63.4% | 55.0% | 55.9% |
56.8% together, 58.1% for him apart and 54.7% for Nylander apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
75 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 57% from beyond forty.