Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

5

Sean Durzi

Utah Hockey Club Defense

Forty-one points and 22:43 a night from the first pairing.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22LAK6432427-9552001192.519:36
2022-23LAK7292938-12501011108.219:47
2023-24ARI7693241-1633011426.322:43
2024-25 so far
Career2122185106-221686023715.720:47

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

76 games, 9 goals and 32 assists for 41 points, 3 on the power play, 63 penalty minutes, 22:43 a night — the most ice on the club — and minus-1, with 1 game-winner. He took 51.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,326 minutes, the 63rd percentile, and his ice went 57-59 against an expectation of 57.67-54.61.

Level with the chances at the offensive end and four more conceded than they called for. Forty-one points is a career high by three and he played the most minutes of anybody on the club to get it.

The Finesse Game

198 attempts at a median of 46 feet with 61 per cent of them from beyond forty and 14 per cent from inside twenty, 139 of those on goal, converted at 6.3 per cent against a career 5.66 across 371 shots.

Eighty-five career assists against 21 goals in 212 games. He walks the line looking for a lane and shoots into traffic when he does not find one; 198 attempts is the most of any defenceman on this club and three power-play goals is what the volume returned.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 196 and took 63 penalty minutes.

168 career penalty minutes in 212 games. He is an ordinary size for a defenceman and does not defend by contact; twenty-two and three-quarter minutes a night against the other club’s best forwards is a lot to ask of a stick and a gap.

The Intangibles

Fifty-second overall in 2018 by Toronto, three seasons, and Utah is his second organisation.

A career minus-22 in 212 games. He was a second-round pick by a club he never played for, spent two seasons in Los Angeles, and took the most ice on this one in his first season with it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,326 minutes

Expected goals
51.4%
63rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.2%
65th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 57 for, 59 against. Expected: 57.7 and 54.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
84th
Numbers
63rd

The report ranks him 21 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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

2023-24 with ARI · 1326 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, 2023-24

The club
ARI took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.4% — 2.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,326 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
J.J. Moser51.8%50.5%47.0%
Clayton Keller48.8%53.0%50.5%
Nick Schmaltz48.1%53.1%50.6%

51.8% together, 50.5% for him apart and 47.0% for Moser apart. Moser was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Moser 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

198 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 61% from beyond forty.