Armchair Hockey Scout Beta
90

Tomas Tatar

New Jersey Devils Left Wing

Eight hundred and fifty-three games, 479 points, and half his attempts from inside twenty feet at 33.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2010-11DET910100000616.79:36
2012-13DET18437+241003212.511:22
2013-14DET73192039+123020315812.014:21
2014-15DET82292756+62890721113.716:13
2015-16DET81212445+42470316512.714:21
2016-17DET82252146-82650516615.117:17
2017-18DET/VGK82201434-193490417411.516:16
2018-19MTL80253358+213440419512.816:25
2019-20MTL68223961+53680116213.616:18
2020-21MTL50102030082018212.214:59
2021-22NJD76151530-222220113211.414:50
2022-23NJD82202848+413010115313.115:07
2023-24COL/SEA7091524+8200027212.512:27
2024-25 so far
Career853220259479+5029650032170812.915:14

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

70 games in Colorado and Seattle, 9 goals and 15 assists for 24 points, 20 penalty minutes, 12:27 a night and plus-8. He took 50.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 810 minutes, the 53rd percentile, and his ice went 37-27 against an expectation of 31.61-31.49.

Five goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four fewer conceded than they called for. Twenty-four points at twelve and a half minutes a night is a fourth-line season for a man who has scored twenty goals seven times.

The Finesse Game

72 shots at a median of 20 feet with half of them from inside 20, converted at 12.5 per cent against a career 12.88.

259 career assists in 853 games. The hands are intact and the ice is gone; seventy-two shots in seventy games is a third of what he used to take. He still finds the middle and he no longer gets sent there.

The Physical Game

He is 5-10 and 173 and has never played a physical game.

296 career penalty minutes in 853 games is a low rate. He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and is easy to move off a puck.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2009 out of Ilava, thirteen seasons across six organisations, and 479 points in 853 games.

He is 33 and this is his second spell in New Jersey. A twelve-minute winger who finishes above expectation and does not defend is a specific and limited thing, and New Jersey has bought three of them.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 810 minutes

Expected goals
50.1%
54th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.1%
64th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 27 against. Expected: 31.6 and 31.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
35th
Numbers
54th

The two rank him within 19 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with SEA · 529 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2023-24

The club
SEA took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
810 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jordan Eberle58.1%44.8%53.9%
Matty Beniers55.3%47.8%50.2%
Adam Larsson52.9%49.1%47.7%

58.1% together, 44.8% for him apart and 53.9% for Eberle apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

117 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.