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

Ryan Suter

The 4th percentile in top speed at 38, and eighty per cent of his shots from beyond forty feet.

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

2005-06	NSH	71	1	15	16	+7	66	0	0	0	84	1.2	17:21
2006-07	NSH	82	8	16	24	+10	54	1	0	0	87	9.2	20:09
2007-08	NSH	76	7	24	31	+3	71	1	0	1	138	5.1	20:35
2008-09	NSH	82	7	38	45	-16	73	3	0	3	143	4.9	24:16
2009-10	NSH	82	4	33	37	+4	48	2	0	1	125	3.2	23:59
2010-11	NSH	70	4	35	39	+20	54	1	0	1	115	3.5	25:12
2011-12	NSH	79	7	39	46	+15	30	3	1	1	134	5.2	26:30
2012-13	MIN	48	4	28	32	+2	24	3	0	1	91	4.4	27:17
2013-14	MIN	82	8	35	43	+15	34	3	0	0	150	5.3	29:25
2014-15	MIN	77	2	36	38	+7	48	1	0	1	150	1.3	29:04
2015-16	MIN	82	8	43	51	+10	30	3	1	2	188	4.3	28:36
2016-17	MIN	82	9	31	40	+34	36	4	1	1	164	5.5	26:55
2017-18	MIN	78	6	45	51	-1	34	1	0	2	149	4.0	26:47
2018-19	MIN	82	7	40	47	-8	41	3	1	2	136	5.1	26:42
2019-20	MIN	69	8	40	48	-6	12	2	0	2	111	7.2	24:38
2020-21	MIN	56	3	16	19	+9	12	1	0	0	86	3.5	22:11
2021-22	DAL	82	7	25	32	+1	40	4	0	0	118	5.9	23:39
2022-23	DAL	82	3	22	25	0	26	0	0	1	92	3.3	20:23
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1362	103	561	664	+106	733	36	4	19	2261	4.6	24:40

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

3 goals and 22 assists in all 82 games, even, 20:23 a night — the fewest minutes he has played in eighteen seasons and still more than most defencemen in the league.

52.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,410 minutes, the 73rd percentile, with his ice at 55-52 against an expectation of 58.88-52.50: four short at the offensive end, exactly as expected at the defensive one.

Eighteen seasons, 1,362 games, 561 assists. He has played 69 or more games in sixteen of them.

The Finesse Game

92 shots at a median of 54 feet, 80 per cent from beyond forty and 6 per cent from inside twenty — the purest point-shooter’s chart in this chapter.

Beyond forty: 71 shots on goal, two goals, 2.82 per cent. Inside forty: 17 shots, one goal.

Three goals in 82 games. He has scored more than eight once in his career and the offence has always been the outlet pass — 561 assists against 103 goals is a ratio almost nobody sustains.

90.4 mph at the 46th percentile. It is not a weapon and has not needed to be.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 201, and the tracking is the story: 21.0 mph at the 4th percentile and 0.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game at the 6th — among the very slowest skaters the feed covers, at 38.

Against that, 3.04 miles a game at the 81st percentile. He is in the group this book has now measured properly: twenty-four defencemen covering three miles a game without ever reaching 22 mph. It is the ordinary shape of a top-four defenceman and, in his case, of a 38-year-old one.

26 penalty minutes in 82 games. He defends with position and with his stick, which is the only way this is possible at this speed.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2003, out of Madison, son of a 1980 Olympic gold medallist and nephew of a Norris winner — one of the most decorated hockey families in the United States.

Thirteen seasons of top-pair minutes in Nashville and Minnesota, a buyout at 36, and two seasons in Dallas playing twenty minutes a night on a club that reached the Conference Final.

He is 38 and played all 82. The tracking says the legs have gone and the possession numbers say it has not cost anything yet.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
80.3% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He defends with position and with his stick, which is the only way this is possible at this speed.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“561 assists against 103 goals is a ratio almost nobody sustains”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,410 minutes

Expected goals: 52.9%; 74th pct
Shot attempts: 52.7%; 77th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 55 for, 52 against. Expected: 58.9 and 52.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

74th

The numbers rank him 57 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 — 58 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 21.0 mph; 29th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.21 a game
Distance: 3.04 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.4 mph; 42nd 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 · 1410 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: DAL took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.9% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,410 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nils Lundkvist	54.8%	51.8%	52.4%
Jason Robertson	61.5%	49.2%	58.2%
Wyatt Johnston	50.8%	53.7%	49.3%

54.8% together, 51.8% for him apart and 52.4% for Lundkvist apart. He was worse away from Lundkvist, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Lundkvist did.

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

147 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 56 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.