Tobias Bjornfot
Los Angeles Kings Defense
A 21-year-old first-rounder who played 1,070 minutes, and almost every forward on the club took a worse share of the chances with him than without.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | LAK | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 12:58 |
| 2020-21 | LAK | 33 | 1 | 5 | 6 | -3 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3.3 | 16:51 |
| 2021-22 | LAK | 70 | 0 | 8 | 8 | -12 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 53 | 0.0 | 16:46 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 106 | 1 | 13 | 14 | -19 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 1.2 | 16:41 |
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
Seventy games and 1,070 five-on-five minutes at 21 — sixth-most on the club — for no goals, eight assists and a minus-12. Twenty-second overall in 2019, and 106 NHL games now.
16:46 a night is the 19th percentile among defencemen. He was not being sheltered into it; he was playing because Drew Doughty played thirty-nine games.
The Finesse Game
There is almost nothing here. 0.44 even-strength points per 60 is the 4th percentile, 2.71 shots per 60 is the 5th, and 53 shots produced no goals at all — the fourth-largest goalless shot total of the 196 skaters in the league who did not score.
The odd part is where he shot from. 19 per cent from the slot is the 93rd percentile among defencemen and a 43-foot median is the 3rd-shortest of 202. He gets closer to the net than almost any defenceman in hockey and nothing happens when he arrives — helped along by 86.7 mph, the 7th-softest shot of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers.
47.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 31st percentile. His ice went 33-47 against an expectation of 42.97-47.57.
The Physical Game
The pair file is why this report exists, and it is unusually one-directional. Trevor Moore took 40.8 per cent of the chances with him and 60.7 without. Viktor Arvidsson, 47.6 and 61.6. Adrian Kempe, 41.7 and 54.7. Phillip Danault, 47.8 and 59.4. Anze Kopitar, 45.5 and 56.1. Sean Durzi, stapled to him for 1,095 attempts at 48.0 per cent, played at 57.8 apart from him. Arthur Kaliyev is the only regular whose share does not move.
Deployment does not rescue it: 48.1 per cent of his end-zone starts came in the attacking end — almost exactly even, and nothing like the gap the shares show.
3.12 hits per 60 is the 38th percentile and 2.97 blocks per 60 is the 12th, which for a defenceman playing 16:46 in his own end is the wrong number to be low.
The Intangibles
The one genuinely good column is discipline. 0.15 penalties taken per 60 is the 4th-fewest of the 202 qualified defencemen and six penalty minutes in seventy games is the whole season. His drawn-minus-taken is the 98th percentile.
21.8 mph and 8.72 miles per 60 are the 41st and 82nd percentiles — he skates well enough, and 2.3 bursts per 60 is the 73rd. This is not a man who cannot move.
He is twenty-one, and a season this bad at that age is evidence rather than a verdict. But it is a full season of it — 1,070 minutes is not a sample you can wave away, and what the pair file describes is not a young defenceman being overmatched occasionally.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
19.4% of his attempts in the slot, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.09 penalty minutes a game over 70, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“2.97 blocks per 60 is the 12th, which for a defenceman playing 16:46 in his own end is the wrong number to be low.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,070 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.5%
- 35th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.3%
- 48th 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: 33 for, 47 against. Expected: 43.0 and 47.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 35 points above where the report does. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 41 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 59th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.64 a game
- Distance
- 2.44 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.7 mph
- 23rd 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 · 1070 minutes at five-on-five
- Sean Durzi57%
- Matt Roy11%
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
- LAK took 52.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.5% — 5.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,070 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Durzi | 48.0% | 46.7% | 57.8% |
| Trevor Moore | 40.8% | 49.9% | 60.7% |
| Phillip Danault | 47.8% | 47.3% | 59.4% |
48.0% together, 46.7% for him apart and 57.8% for Durzi apart. Durzi 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
72 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 0 of them goals. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 53% from beyond forty.