This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Robert Bortuzzo
St. Louis Blues Defense
484 penalty minutes in 533 games, and twenty goals in twelve seasons.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | PIT | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 10:54 |
| 2012-13 | PIT | 15 | 2 | 2 | 4 | +3 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 20.0 | 13:17 |
| 2013-14 | PIT | 54 | 0 | 10 | 10 | -3 | 74 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 0.0 | 15:29 |
| 2014-15 | PIT/STL | 51 | 3 | 5 | 8 | -9 | 93 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 56 | 5.4 | 15:07 |
| 2015-16 | STL | 40 | 2 | 1 | 3 | +2 | 52 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 4.3 | 13:16 |
| 2016-17 | STL | 38 | 1 | 3 | 4 | +11 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 45 | 2.2 | 14:05 |
| 2017-18 | STL | 72 | 4 | 9 | 13 | +11 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 5.3 | 14:48 |
| 2018-19 | STL | 59 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +9 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 75 | 2.7 | 15:28 |
| 2019-20 | STL | 42 | 2 | 4 | 6 | +12 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 36 | 5.6 | 13:07 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 40 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -3 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 31 | 3.2 | 14:10 |
| 2021-22 | STL | 73 | 1 | 5 | 6 | -4 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 2.1 | 13:44 |
| 2022-23 | STL | 43 | 2 | 3 | 5 | +9 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 6.7 | 12:34 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 533 | 20 | 54 | 74 | +39 | 484 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 506 | 4.0 | 14:13 |
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
2 goals and 3 assists in 43 games — 5 points — at 12:34 a night. Plus-9, 30 shots at 6.7 per cent, 29 penalty minutes.
46.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 462 minutes, the 22nd percentile, with his ice at 22-13 against an expectation of 15.64-18.29 — six goals better than the chances at the good end and five better at the other.
An eleven-goal swing in his favour on 462 minutes, which is the fourth such case in this chapter and the reason the plus-9 should be ignored.
He started 45.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 29th percentile.
The Finesse Game
30 shots at a median of 47 feet, with 60 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 5 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty feet: 18 shots on goal and no goals. From twenty to forty: ten shots and one goal. Inside twenty: two shots and one goal.
Twenty goals in 533 career games at a 4.0 per cent shooting percentage. There is no offensive part of this file and there never has been.
42 tracked attempts is the smallest count of any defenceman in this chapter, and eleven of them are slap shots. 88.9 mph at the 38th percentile — a soft shot for a defenceman.
The first pass is short and safe, and when it is not available he puts it off the glass without hesitating.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 206 pounds, and this is the whole file.
484 penalty minutes in 533 career games — nearly a minute a game across twelve seasons, and 29 in 43 last season. That is one of the highest career rates any defenceman in this book carries.
Top speed 21.2 mph at the 7th percentile, 0.3 bursts above twenty a game at the 8th, 1.75 miles a game at the 6th. He is slow on every measure and plays twelve minutes.
He is nasty and takes liberties, and at 6-4 in front of his own net the cross-check is the method rather than an accident of one.
He clears the crease, blocks shots, and does the two things a seventh defenceman is dressed for.
The Intangibles
Seventy-eighth overall in 2007, the third round, twelve seasons, 533 games, 74 points across Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and a Stanley Cup in 2019.
20 goals and 54 assists in twelve years, and a plus-39. He has played more than 60 games in a season twice.
He is thirty-four, the oldest player on this roster, and a seventh defenceman on a club that has begun a rebuild.
What the file is for is the record: 484 penalty minutes, a championship, and twelve seasons of being the man a club dresses when it expects the game to get unpleasant.
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.
- 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.
“He is nasty and takes liberties, and at 6-4 in front of his own net the cross-check is the method rather than an accident of one.”
“He clears the crease, blocks shots, and does the two things a seventh defenceman is dressed for.”
“He clears the crease, blocks shots, and does the two things a seventh defenceman is dressed for.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 462 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.1%
- 28th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.8%
- 11th 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: 22 for, 13 against. Expected: 15.6 and 18.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 points of one another. 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.
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 — 62 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 · 43 games
- Top speed
- 21.2 mph
- 35th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.26 a game
- Distance
- 1.75 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.9 mph
- 34th 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 90.0
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 · 462 minutes at five-on-five
- Calle Rosen17%
- Torey Krug15%
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
- STL took 45.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.1% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 462 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Niko Mikkola | 44.4% | 47.2% | 45.7% |
| Brayden Schenn | 52.5% | 44.1% | 43.1% |
| Jordan Kyrou | 49.0% | 45.1% | 44.1% |
44.4% together, 47.2% for him apart and 45.7% for Mikkola 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
42 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.