Ryan Carpenter
San Jose Sharks Center
Undrafted, 330 games as a fourth-line centre, and a shot at the floor of the league's distribution.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | SJS | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 7:27 |
| 2016-17 | SJS | 11 | 2 | 2 | 4 | +5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 10.0 | 10:23 |
| 2017-18 | SJS/VGK | 52 | 9 | 6 | 15 | +1 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 85 | 10.6 | 12:36 |
| 2018-19 | VGK | 68 | 5 | 13 | 18 | -6 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 102 | 4.9 | 12:37 |
| 2019-20 | CHI | 69 | 3 | 12 | 15 | -6 | 28 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 80 | 3.8 | 14:04 |
| 2020-21 | CHI | 40 | 4 | 1 | 5 | -10 | 19 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 51 | 7.8 | 12:41 |
| 2021-22 | CHI/CGY | 67 | 3 | 9 | 12 | -11 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 67 | 4.5 | 12:35 |
| 2022-23 | NYR | 22 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 9:11 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 330 | 27 | 45 | 72 | -32 | 116 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 422 | 6.4 | 12:36 |
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
1 goal and 2 assists in 22 games — 3 points — at 9:11 a night for the Rangers. Minus-5, 17 shots at 5.9 per cent, 10 penalty minutes.
Twenty-two games at nine minutes is the smallest file in this chapter. He has 330 career games and this was the least of them.
Seventeen shots on goal produced one goal, from inside twenty feet. Six from the mid-slot and three from beyond forty produced nothing.
The Finesse Game
25 tracked attempts, six of them tip-ins, and none of them slap shots.
77.0 mph — the 0th percentile. Of the men in this book whose shot was measured at all, only Chris Tierney and Isac Lundestrom were lower, and the median skater is at 90.9.
That is not a criticism so much as a description of the player. 27 goals in 330 games at 6.4 per cent is the career record, and the shot has never been part of what he is for.
What he does is win a draw and get the puck out. A fourth-line centre with four career shorthanded goals and a 6.4 per cent shooting percentage is being dressed for the defensive-zone faceoff and the shift that follows it.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 198 pounds. 1.54 miles a game at the 1st percentile, with a top speed of 21.3 mph at the 10th and 0.7 bursts above twenty a game at the 36th.
Nine minutes a night explains the mileage. The top speed does not: he is genuinely slow, in the bottom tenth of the league, and has been for eight seasons.
10 penalty minutes in 22 games and 116 in 330 career games. He blocks shots and gets in lanes, and the penalty record says the defensive work is done with position rather than with the stick.
He kills penalties on every club he has played for, which alongside the faceoffs is the whole of the case for him.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, eight seasons, 330 games, 72 points across five clubs.
27 goals and 45 assists in eight years. He played his first NHL game at twenty-five and has never played more than 69 games in a season.
He is thirty-two, joining a rebuilding club as its thirteenth forward. That is the correct role and it is the one he has held for most of eight years.
What this file is worth to the book is the shot-speed measurement: 77.0 mph sits at the floor of the distribution, and it belongs to a man with three hundred and thirty NHL games.
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 played his first NHL game at twenty-five and has never played more than 69 games in a season.”
“A fourth-line centre with four career shorthanded goals and a 6.4 per cent shooting percentage is being dressed for the defensive-zone faceoff and the shift that follows it.”
“He kills penalties on every club he has played for, which alongside the faceoffs is the whole of the case for him.”
“He blocks shots and gets in lanes, and the penalty record says the defensive work is done with position rather than with the stick.”
The numbers underneath
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 22 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 20th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.68 a game
- Distance
- 1.54 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 77.0 mph
- 12th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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 NYR · 181 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.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
25 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 8 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.