This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →
Sebastian Aho
New York Islanders Defense
Thirty-six games from one of the eleven lightest defencemen in the book, at 5-10 and 180 pounds.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | NYI | 22 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 4.2 | 16:15 |
| 2020-21 | NYI | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 25.0 | 13:21 |
| 2021-22 | NYI | 36 | 2 | 10 | 12 | -6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 5.9 | 16:27 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 61 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -12 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 6.5 | 16:14 |
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
36 games, 2 goals and 10 assists at 16:27 a night, minus-6, ten penalty minutes, 34 shots. One hundred and thirty-ninth overall in 2017, three seasons, 61 games, 18 points.
Thirty-six games is short of the forty this book requires for a percentile, and everything below is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
5-10 and 180 pounds. Eleven defencemen in this edition weigh 180 or less, and he shares the figure with Quinn Hughes, Matt Grzelcyk and Chris Wideman.
Twelve points from thirty-six games at sixteen and a half minutes is a real rate for a third-pair defenceman — ten of them assists.
Thirty-four shots at a 49-foot median, eight per cent from the slot and seventy-three per cent from beyond forty feet. A point shot, at low volume.
41.7 per cent of the expected goals across 583 five-on-five minutes is the worst share of any Islander defenceman. His ice went 21-24 against an expectation of 17.7-24.75 — three goals of surplus going forward and one fewer against than the model asked.
56.2 per cent of his end-zone starts came in the attacking end, the 144th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. That is soft usage, and the share out of it is the worst on the blue line.
The Physical Game
Ten penalty minutes in thirty-six games at 180 pounds.
There is not enough ice time here for a rate to mean anything and this report will not convert thirty-six games into a per-sixty figure and present it as a finding.
The Intangibles
21.0 mph and six recorded sprints over twenty miles an hour in thirty-six games. Both of those are maximums and counts drawn from a third of a season, and a man who plays twice as much has twice as many chances at each.
He is 26, a fifth-round pick, and has 61 NHL games across three seasons spanning five years.
A 180-pound defenceman who passes and does not shoot is the archetype this book pays most attention to, and thirty-six games is not enough to say whether this is one. The chance share says no and the deployment says the club was already protecting him.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 583 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.7%
- 6th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.9%
- 10th 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: 21 for, 24 against. Expected: 17.7 and 24.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 — 53 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 · 36 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 27th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.17 a game
- Distance
- 2.31 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.0 mph
- 36th 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 · 569 minutes at five-on-five
- Andy Greeneoff the roster24%
- Ryan Pulock22%
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
- NYI took 46.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.7% — 5.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 583 minutes at five-on-five — 24th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathew Barzal | 40.5% | 42.2% | 49.3% |
| Zach Parise | 39.2% | 42.6% | 51.1% |
| Oliver Wahlstrom | 48.0% | 39.4% | 51.5% |
40.5% together, 42.2% for him apart and 49.3% for Barzal apart. Barzal 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
48 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.