Sam Gagner

A thousand games, sixteen seasons, and a fourth separate spell in Edmonton.

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

2007-08	EDM	79	13	36	49	-21	23	4	0	1	135	9.6	15:41
2008-09	EDM	76	16	25	41	-1	51	6	0	1	156	10.3	16:46
2009-10	EDM	68	15	26	41	-8	33	6	0	1	170	8.8	16:17
2010-11	EDM	68	15	27	42	-17	37	3	1	2	138	10.9	17:45
2011-12	EDM	75	18	29	47	+5	36	6	0	0	149	12.1	17:11
2012-13	EDM	48	14	24	38	-6	23	4	0	1	113	12.4	19:25
2013-14	EDM	67	10	27	37	-29	41	1	0	1	143	7.0	18:23
2014-15	ARI	81	15	26	41	-28	28	6	0	1	183	8.2	17:15
2015-16	PHI	53	8	8	16	+4	25	2	0	2	86	9.3	13:52
2016-17	CBJ	81	18	32	50	+10	22	8	0	1	178	10.1	13:43
2017-18	VAN	74	10	21	31	-18	35	3	0	2	164	6.1	15:07
2018-19	VAN/EDM	32	6	7	13	-6	14	1	0	1	68	8.8	14:36
2019-20	EDM/DET	42	6	7	13	-10	12	2	0	0	79	7.6	13:21
2020-21	DET	42	7	8	15	-4	15	1	0	1	88	8.0	15:26
2021-22	DET	81	13	18	31	-4	32	0	1	0	132	9.8	13:37
2022-23	WPG	48	8	6	14	-4	13	1	0	2	78	10.3	12:10
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1015	192	327	519	-137	440	54	2	17	2060	9.3	15:46

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

8 goals and 6 assists in 48 games for Winnipeg, minus-4, 12:10 a night.

50.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 505 minutes, the 56th percentile — average — with his ice at 17-19 against an expectation of 20.49-20.17.

Sixteen seasons, 1,015 games, 519 points. He has played for seven organisations and Edmonton three separate times before this one.

The Finesse Game

78 shots at a median of 25 feet, 40 per cent from inside twenty and 31 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside forty: 53 shots, seven goals, 13.21 per cent. Beyond forty: 23 shots, one.

Almost a third of his shot volume from beyond forty feet is a high share for a bottom-six forward and it is not producing anything. The close-range rate is fine.

88.5 mph at the 33rd percentile. He once scored eight points in a single game, the first player to do it since 1988, and it remains the single most famous thing about him.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 200. 21.3 mph at the 10th percentile and 0.4 bursts over twenty a game at the 22nd, on 1.85 miles a game at the 9th.

Slow, and covering very little ground, at 33 in twelve-minute nights. Nothing here argues for more.

13 penalty minutes in 48 games. He has never played a physical game.

The Intangibles

Sixth overall in 2007 to Edmonton, 49 points as an 18-year-old rookie, and then a career of being just short of a top-six forward on eight different clubs.

His father Dave played 946 NHL games, so between them the family is close to two thousand.

He is 34, back in Edmonton for a fourth time, and the role is thirteenth forward and power-play depth. A thousand games is the achievement and the record says the rest of it was always going to be 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.

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
31.4% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He once scored eight points in a single game, the first player to do it since 1988, and it remains the single most famous thing about him.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 505 minutes

Expected goals: 50.4%; 56th pct
Shot attempts: 52.6%; 76th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 17 for, 19 against. Expected: 20.5 and 20.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

7th

Numbers

56th

The numbers rank him 49 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 — 54 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 · 48 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 20th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.42 a game
Distance: 1.85 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.5 mph; 58th 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 with WPG · 505 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: WPG took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.4% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: 505 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Kyle Connor	49.2%	51.4%	52.2%
Josh Morrissey	53.5%	48.1%	51.1%
Neal Pionk	54.6%	47.9%	48.2%

49.2% together, 51.4% for him apart and 52.2% for Connor apart. Connor 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

102 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.