Shayne Gostisbehere

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

14 goals and 37 assists in all 82 games — 51 points at 22:11 a night, minus-23, with 2 power-play goals on 151 shots and 26 penalty minutes.

Fifty-one points from a defenceman on the worst club in the league. Fourteen defencemen in hockey scored more, and every one of them played for a better team than this.

42.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,449 minutes, the 5th percentile among defencemen. His ice went 59-76 against an expectation of 51.27-69.12 — eight goals of scoring above what the chances predicted, and seven more conceded than they did.

And then the pairing. With Dysin Mayo he took 38.4 per cent across 1,626 attempts — the largest pairing sample on the club. Apart from Mayo, across 1,021, he took 48.4. Ten points of chance share is the difference between a bottom-pair defenceman and an ordinary one, and it is entirely accounted for by who was standing next to him.

The Finesse Game

37 assists and 196 career assists against 74 goals, and the first pass is early and flat. He is a genuine power-play quarterback — 2:51 a night of it, the 91st percentile among defencemen, with 37 per cent of his points scored on it — and 1.27 even-strength points per 60 at the 83rd percentile says the offence is not only the man advantage.

The shot is the surprise. 100.3 mph off a 5-11, 183-pound frame is the 93rd percentile, and he converted 14 of 151 attempts at 9.3 per cent, the 95th percentile for a defenceman. He shoots from a median of 50 feet and scores anyway, because the puck arrives before the goaltender has found it.

2.57 giveaways per 60 is among the highest figures for a defenceman in the league. He carries out of his own end rather than passing out of it, and a share of the time he is stripped doing it.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 183, and there is no physical game. 1.98 hits per 60 is the 17th percentile and 155 penalty minutes in 463 games is the record of a man who has never fought for a puck he could skate around. 3.79 blocks per 60, the 39th percentile, is ordinary at best.

The skating is not what the size suggests. Top speed 21.8 mph is the 43rd percentile, 0.5 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 14th, and 7.98 miles per sixty is the 7th percentile among defencemen. He is not fast and he does not cover ground. A small offensive defenceman is usually small and quick; this one is small and clever, which is a harder thing to survive on when the gap closes.

The Intangibles

Seventy-eighth overall in 2012, a Calder finalist at 22 in Philadelphia, 270 points in 463 games, and a career that has already been written off once.

He is 29, in the last year of his contract, and he is the most tradeable asset on a club that will finish last again. Fifty-one points and a hundred-mile-an-hour shot from a left-shot defenceman who can run a power play is a genuine deadline commodity, and the 42.6 will scare somebody off it who has not read the second half of this page.