Shea Theodore

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

78 games, 14 goals and 38 assists at 23:08 a night, plus-6, twenty-four penalty minutes, 205 shots, one power-play goal and five game-winners — the most game-winners on the club. Twenty-sixth overall in 2013 by Anaheim, seven seasons, 395 games, 223 points.

The Finesse Game

Thirty-eight assists and 1.51 even-strength points per 60, the 92nd percentile among defencemen, against a 6.8 per cent shooting rate on 205 shots.

6.82 shots per 60 is the 14th-most of the 202 and 1.995 takeaways per 60 the 8th-most — and the man who leads all 202 defencemen in takeaways plays on the same blue line. Two of the eight best stick-checkers at the position in the league were in this lineup.

A 50-foot median, but seventeen per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet at the 86th percentile. He walks the line and he goes in.

52.7 per cent of the expected goals is the 73rd percentile and 53.2 per cent of the attempts the 80th, out of 55.6 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 164th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

His ice went 69-56 against an expectation of 70.85-63.66 — two short in front and seven fewer against. The only defenceman on this club whose minutes beat their expectation by a full seven goals did it in the defensive half of the ledger, which is not where his reputation is.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 197 pounds, and twenty-four penalty minutes in seventy-eight games.

1.230 hits per 60 is the 9th-fewest of all 202 defencemen and 3.23 blocks per 60 the 18th percentile, against 0:19 a night short-handed at the 11th.

He is 197 pounds and the club does not use him that way, and the ledger above says it has been right not to.

The Intangibles

8.996 miles per 60 is the 11th-most of the 192 tracked defencemen, at 22.5 mph and 2.9 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60.

A light defenceman who skates this much and hits this little, at twenty-three minutes a night, is the archetype the modern game has been building toward — and this one is 27, with 165 assists in 395 games and a career plus-48.

Fifty-two points is a career high, and 23:08 is a career high, and both came in the season the club missed. The one number that argues with the file is 2:28 a night on a power play that finished 17th in the league, which for a defenceman with these hands is less than it should be worth.