This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Sam Carrick

Thirty per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, which is the worst figure in the league.

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

2014-15	TOR	16	1	1	2	+1	9	0	0	0	17	5.9	6:29
2015-16	TOR	3	0	0	0	-2	4	0	0	0	4	0.0	11:28
2018-19	ANA	6	0	1	1	-1	2	0	0	0	5	0.0	10:13
2019-20	ANA	9	1	1	2	-3	0	0	1	0	16	6.3	13:46
2020-21	ANA	13	2	4	6	+4	28	0	0	0	23	8.7	12:55
2021-22	ANA	64	11	8	19	-12	85	0	0	0	80	13.8	11:28
2022-23	ANA	52	3	4	7	-17	86	0	0	0	50	6.0	10:34
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	163	18	19	37	-30	214	0	1	0	195	9.2	10:53

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 4 assists in 52 games — 7 points at 10:34 a night, minus-17, on 50 shots and 86 penalty minutes.

30.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 501 minutes. That is the 0th percentile and it is the lowest figure on this roster by six points. He started 35.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end, the 1st percentile.

His ice went 13-29 against an expectation of 12.64-28.95 — the chances and the goals agree exactly, which means the shifts really were that bad.

The Finesse Game

50 attempts at a median of 16 feet — closer than anybody else here — with 51 per cent from inside 20, converting at 6 per cent. Eighteen goals in 163 NHL games.

He goes to the right places and cannot finish from them. That is the whole offensive report and it has been consistent across seven years and three organisations.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 202. 214 penalty minutes in 163 games is the highest rate on the club and it is the job: he fights, he finishes checks, and he takes the fourth-line centre’s defensive-zone draws.

1.68 miles a game at the 3rd percentile and 0.3 bursts at the 10th. The shifts are short, hard and defensive, which is what the numbers describe rather than a criticism of them.

The Intangibles

A hundred and forty-fourth overall in 2010, and he was in his late twenties before he held an NHL job at all. That is a long apprenticeship in the American League for a job most people would not want.

He is 31. He does the things a fourth-line centre is asked to do and the underlying numbers are still the worst in the league, which is the honest tension in the role — the club needs somebody to take those shifts, and the man who takes them will always look like this.

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.

nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“he fights, he finishes checks, and he takes the fourth-line centre's defensive-zone draws”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“214 penalty minutes in 163 games is the highest rate on the club”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“he takes the fourth-line centre's defensive-zone draws”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 501 minutes

Expected goals: 30.4%; 0th pct
Shot attempts: 38.8%; 1st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 13 for, 29 against. Expected: 12.6 and 28.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

23rd

Numbers

0th

The report ranks him 23 points above where the numbers do. 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 501 minutes at five-on-five

Maxime Comtoisnow CAR35%
Jayson Megnanow BOS27%
Jakob Silfverberg25%

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: ANA took 39.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 30.4% — 9.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: 501 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Max Comtois	31.7%	29.7%	41.8%
Cam Fowler	33.5%	28.9%	43.0%
Simon Benoit	27.0%	32.1%	38.7%

31.7% together, 29.7% for him apart and 41.8% for Comtois apart. Comtois 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

55 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.