Ty Smith
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
A minus-26 at twenty-two out of the 37th-softest chair of 652, and the 11th-softest shot of 192 defencemen.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | NJD | 48 | 2 | 21 | 23 | -9 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 69 | 2.9 | 20:07 |
| 2021-22 | NJD | 66 | 5 | 15 | 20 | -26 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 77 | 6.5 | 17:30 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 114 | 7 | 36 | 43 | -35 | 44 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 146 | 4.8 | 18:36 |
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
66 games for New Jersey, 5 goals and 15 assists at 17:30 a night, minus-26, twenty-two penalty minutes, 77 shots. Seventeenth overall in 2018, two seasons, 114 games, 43 points, a career minus-35.
The Finesse Game
0.91 even-strength points per 60 is the 45th percentile and twenty per cent of his points came on the power play off 1:20 a night at the 67th.
4.00 shots per 60 is the 41st percentile at 6.5 per cent from a 52-foot median — a point shot, and the shot itself is 87.5 mph, the 11th-softest of the 192 defencemen the tracking measures.
48.9 per cent of the expected goals and 49.6 per cent of the attempts, out of 61.4 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 37th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
That is a top-forty soft chair in the league and the shares came out below fifty anyway. His ice went 40-59 against an expectation of 44.52-46.48 — twelve and a half more goals against than the model asked, which is where the minus-26 comes from.
New Jersey rated 32nd in the league in goaltending at minus-43.3, the worst figure in hockey, so a substantial part of that twelve and a half is not his.
The Physical Game
2.34 hits per 60 is the 22nd percentile and 3.79 blocks the 39th at 5-11 and 180 pounds. 0.47 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.57 taken, twenty-two penalty minutes in sixty-six games.
There is very little here and there was never going to be at this size.
The Intangibles
9.01 miles per 60 is the 95th percentile among defencemen, at 5-11 and 180 pounds.
Against a 21.5 mph top speed at the 27th percentile and 2.3 bursts per 60 at the 74th. Enormous distance, ordinary pace, plenty of short sprints — the profile of a small defenceman who moves the puck by skating it rather than by shooting it.
He is 22 with 114 NHL games and a first-round pedigree, and has just been traded out of the organisation that drafted him. The ground covered and the point rate are the case. The shot speed, the goals against and the fact that a 61.4 per cent zone start produced a 48.9 per cent share are what Pittsburgh has taken on.
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
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“9.01 miles per 60 is the 95th percentile among defencemen, at 5-11 and 180 pounds.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,058 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.9%
- 47th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.6%
- 51st 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: 40 for, 59 against. Expected: 44.5 and 46.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 25 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 — 54 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 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 47th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.68 a game
- Distance
- 2.63 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.5 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 90.4
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 with NJD · 1058 minutes at five-on-five
- P.K. Subbanoff the roster50%
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
- NJD took 51.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,058 minutes at five-on-five — 69th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| P.K. Subban | 55.4% | 42.9% | 49.7% |
| Dawson Mercer | 46.1% | 50.1% | 51.3% |
| Jesper Bratt | 54.2% | 46.9% | 57.5% |
55.4% together, 42.9% for him apart and 49.7% for Subban 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
114 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.