This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Trevor van Riemsdyk
Washington Capitals Defense
Four goals from seventy point shots, on the softest shot on the blue line.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | CHI | 18 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 0.0 | 13:32 |
| 2015-16 | CHI | 82 | 3 | 11 | 14 | -5 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 85 | 3.5 | 19:59 |
| 2016-17 | CHI | 58 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +17 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 73 | 6.9 | 18:25 |
| 2017-18 | CAR | 79 | 3 | 13 | 16 | +9 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 111 | 2.7 | 17:03 |
| 2018-19 | CAR | 78 | 3 | 11 | 14 | -4 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 102 | 2.9 | 15:04 |
| 2019-20 | CAR | 49 | 1 | 7 | 8 | -7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 1.7 | 14:52 |
| 2020-21 | WSH | 20 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3 | 17:05 |
| 2021-22 | WSH | 72 | 1 | 16 | 17 | -3 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 75 | 1.3 | 17:28 |
| 2022-23 | WSH | 75 | 7 | 16 | 23 | +10 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 97 | 7.2 | 19:04 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 531 | 24 | 88 | 112 | +16 | 159 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 645 | 3.7 | 17:23 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
7 goals and 16 assists in 75 games — 23 points — at 19:04 a night. Plus-10, 97 shots at 7.2 per cent, 15 penalty minutes.
7 goals and 23 points are both career highs, in his ninth season, at thirty-one.
51.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,198 minutes, the 59th percentile, with his ice at 61-54 against an expectation of 53.73-50.17 — seven more goals scored than the chances called for and four more allowed.
He started 57.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 84th percentile: 429 attacking draws against 312 defensive ones. Soft minutes, in the second pair, and an above-average chance share out of them.
The Finesse Game
97 shots at a median of 51 feet, with 66 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 9 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty feet: 70 shots on goal and four goals — 5.71 per cent, nearly double the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 11 shots and one goal. Inside twenty: 11 shots and two goals.
And here the point-shot question gets its last piece of evidence in this book, from the least likely place. He slaps 21 of his 127 attempts — a 16.5 per cent share, low — and his shot is measured at 87.3 mph, the 24th percentile, the softest of any defenceman on this roster. Seventy long shots on goal, four goals, and a rate almost twice the league’s.
Set that beside Joel Edmundson on the same roster — a 46.7 per cent slap share, 101.3 mph, one goal from forty-eight — and the argument closes itself. The velocity is not the mechanism. It never was, and this book has now shown it in club after club.
24 goals in 531 career games at 3.7 per cent. Seven last season is a third of a career total.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 210 pounds, with 15 penalty minutes in 75 games and 159 in 531 career games — a very low rate.
A top speed of 21.5 mph, the 14th percentile, and 0.6 bursts above twenty a game, the 29th. He covers 2.50 miles a game, the 42nd.
Slow, and covering below-average ground, which is why the eighty-fourth percentile of starts is where he plays.
He defends by position and by getting his stick in the lane early, and a defenceman with these feet who is never in the penalty box is doing that job well.
He is not physical, does not fight, and does not punish anybody. The whole of the value is that he is where he is supposed to be.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, nine seasons, 531 games, 112 points across Chicago, Carolina and Washington.
24 goals and 88 assists, and a plus-16.
He is thirty-two, and he came out of college undrafted to play five hundred NHL games on four clubs.
An undrafted defenceman with five hundred games and a career high at thirty-one is one of the quiet good stories in this book, and there are more of them on every roster than anybody notices.
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
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- 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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 94 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.3%, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.20 penalty minutes a game over 75, 8th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He defends by position and by getting his stick in the lane early, and a defenceman with these feet who is never in the penalty box is doing that job well.”
“An undrafted defenceman with five hundred games and a career high at thirty-one is one of the quiet good stories in this book, and there are more of them on every roster than anybody notices.”
“He is not physical, does not fight, and does not punish anybody.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,198 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.7%
- 65th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.1%
- 62nd 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: 61 for, 54 against. Expected: 53.7 and 50.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 22 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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, 2022-23 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 47th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.57 a game
- Distance
- 2.50 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.3 mph
- 25th 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 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1198 minutes at five-on-five
- Matt Irwinoff the roster15%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- WSH took 49.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.7% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,198 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Gustafsson | 54.4% | 49.7% | 52.5% |
| Alex Ovechkin | 47.2% | 53.8% | 47.5% |
| Evgeny Kuznetsov | 43.8% | 55.1% | 44.5% |
54.4% together, 49.7% for him apart and 52.5% for Gustafsson apart. He was worse away from Gustafsson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Gustafsson did.
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
121 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 41 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.