This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ryan McDonagh
Nashville Predators Defense
The 2nd-most short-handed ice time and the 6th-lowest giveaway rate of 202 defencemen, arriving from a Stanley Cup final.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | NYR | 40 | 1 | 8 | 9 | +16 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 27 | 3.7 | 18:44 |
| 2011-12 | NYR | 82 | 7 | 25 | 32 | +25 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 123 | 5.7 | 24:44 |
| 2012-13 | NYR | 47 | 4 | 15 | 19 | +13 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 83 | 4.8 | 24:21 |
| 2013-14 | NYR | 77 | 14 | 29 | 43 | +11 | 36 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 177 | 7.9 | 24:49 |
| 2014-15 | NYR | 71 | 8 | 25 | 33 | +23 | 26 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 148 | 5.4 | 23:08 |
| 2015-16 | NYR | 73 | 9 | 25 | 34 | +26 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 113 | 8.0 | 22:21 |
| 2016-17 | NYR | 77 | 6 | 36 | 42 | +20 | 37 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 153 | 3.9 | 24:21 |
| 2017-18 | NYR/TBL | 63 | 4 | 25 | 29 | +8 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 99 | 4.0 | 23:20 |
| 2018-19 | TBL | 82 | 9 | 37 | 46 | +38 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 128 | 7.0 | 22:05 |
| 2019-20 | TBL | 50 | 1 | 11 | 12 | +7 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 2.0 | 20:42 |
| 2020-21 | TBL | 50 | 4 | 8 | 12 | +13 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 4.7 | 21:54 |
| 2021-22 | TBL | 71 | 4 | 22 | 26 | +15 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 4.7 | 22:27 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 783 | 71 | 266 | 337 | +215 | 304 | 9 | 4 | 11 | 1271 | 5.6 | 22:58 |
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
71 games for Tampa Bay, 4 goals and 22 assists at 22:27 a night, plus-15, sixteen penalty minutes. Twelfth overall in 2007 by Montreal, twelve seasons, 783 games, 337 points, a career plus-215.
The Finesse Game
1.12 even-strength points per 60 is the 69th percentile among defencemen and four per cent of his points came on the power play — he takes 22 seconds of it a night.
3.20 shots per 60 is the 35th-lowest of 202, from a 50-foot median with twelve per cent from the slot. There is no offensive case here and there has not been one since 2016-17.
0.90 giveaways per 60 is the 6th-lowest of the 202, and sixteen penalty minutes came out of seventy-one games.
49.6 per cent of the expected goals is exactly median and 47.7 per cent of the attempts the 31st percentile, on 42.2 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 120th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
His ice went 53-40 against an expectation of 52.23-53.02. Goals for at the model and thirteen fewer against than it asked — on a club whose goaltending rated 6th in the league, which is where most of that belongs.
The Physical Game
5.16 blocks per 60 is the 46th-most of 202 and 3.61 hits the 46th percentile at 6-1 and 216.
0.30 penalties taken per 60 is the 11th percentile. He plays twenty-two and a half minutes of the hardest available minutes and takes almost nothing.
The Intangibles
3:15 short-handed a night is the 2nd-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, behind the man he now plays alongside. Mattias Ekholm was 1st at 3:16, and Nashville took more short-handed minutes than any club in the league. The two of them are now on the same blue line.
22.7 mph is the 23rd-fastest of 192 defencemen, and 7.81 miles per 60 is the 6th-least. Quick in a straight line and covering almost no ice — the profile of a man who is never out of position and never chasing.
He is 33, and Tampa Bay lost the Stanley Cup final to Colorado in six games in June. He arrives at a club that finished 17th in chance share and 6th in chance suppression. What he brings is not points: it is the penalty kill, a giveaway rate almost nobody matches, and a plus-215 accumulated on clubs that were better than this one. The last of those three will not travel.
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.
“3:15 short-handed a night is the 2nd-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, behind the man he now plays alongside.”
“0.90 giveaways per 60 is the 6th-lowest of the 202, and sixteen penalty minutes came out of seventy-one games.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,298 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.6%
- 54th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.7%
- 35th 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: 53 for, 40 against. Expected: 52.2 and 53.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.56 a game
- Distance
- 2.92 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.0 mph
- 82nd 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 with TBL · 1298 minutes at five-on-five
- Erik Cernak34%
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
- TBL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.6% — 2.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,298 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Cernak | 49.7% | 49.6% | 56.4% |
| Alex Killorn | 46.7% | 50.8% | 50.4% |
| Anthony Cirelli | 51.7% | 48.9% | 55.9% |
49.7% together, 49.6% for him apart and 56.4% for Cernak apart. Cernak was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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
129 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.