Simon Benoit

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

1 goal and 4 assists in 53 games — 5 points at 14:06 a night, minus-5, on 45 shots and 22 penalty minutes.

48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 709 minutes, the 42nd percentile — the second-best share of any defenceman on this roster. His ice went 25-29 against an expectation of 28.13-29.55, three goals of scoring missing and the goals against landing where the chances said.

He was the better half of his own pairing. With Kevin Shattenkirk the two took 49.4 per cent across 748 attempts; Shattenkirk away from him was 45.5, and Benoit away from Shattenkirk was 48.0. That is a third-pair defenceman in his first real season outplaying an 816-game veteran, and it is the only reason this page is worth reading.

The Finesse Game

There is almost none. 0.42 even-strength points per 60 is the 3rd percentile among defencemen and 45 attempts at a median of 51 feet, 69 per cent of them from beyond 40 and 5 per cent from inside 20, produced one goal.

The shot itself is heavy — 97.2 mph, the 74th percentile — and it arrives from a place where heaviness does not matter. He took 0:01 a night of power play. Nothing about the offensive half of this is going to change.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 210, and 13.50 hits per 60 is the 98th percentile among the league defencemen. Only a handful of men at the position finish more checks, and none of them play fourteen minutes to do it.

The complication is what comes with it: 3.13 blocks per 60 is the 14th percentile. He plays the man rather than the puck, and a defenceman who commits to the body and misses has taken himself out of the play.

3.7 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 93rd percentile at a top speed of 22.2, the 65th. He is not fast but he closes quickly, which for a 6-4 defender is the more useful of the two.

The Intangibles

He was not drafted, signed out of the QMJHL as a free agent, and has 59 NHL games.

He is 24, on a club that has just sold both of its established defencemen and has room on the roster it did not have a year ago. He is not a top-four defenceman and nothing here suggests he will be, but a 6-4 undrafted left shot who hits at the 98th percentile and out-shares the veteran beside him is a genuinely useful thing to have found for nothing.