Tyler Benson
Edmonton Oilers Left Wing
The softest recorded shot of the 649 skaters the league tracking covers — 73.1 mph.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | EDM | 7 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 10:23 |
| 2021-22 | EDM | 29 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -5 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 5.6 | 8:33 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 36 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -6 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3 | 8:54 |
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 1 assist in 29 games — 2 points, a minus-5 and 18 penalty minutes at 8:33 a night.
Twenty-nine games and 249 minutes is far short of the 40 games and 500 minutes this book requires, so there is no peer group and nothing here is a percentile. 47.2 per cent of the expected goals across four hours of five-on-five. His ice went 6-12 against an expectation of 8.33-9.31.
Four hours is a long weekend and this section should be read as one.
The Finesse Game
73.1 mph is the softest recorded shot of the 649 skaters the league’s tracking covers. Not the softest among forwards, or among fourth-liners: the softest of everybody it measured. Colton White’s 75.2 is the next one up.
A maximum is a season best, and twenty-nine games is a quarter of the chances to set a high one — but a quarter-season maximum of 73 mph is still a long way below the next man’s, and the gap is two miles an hour.
Eighteen shots in twenty-nine games, one of which went in. The median travels 32 feet and 13 per cent came from inside twenty — the most distant chart of any Edmonton forward, which is a difficult combination with the softest shot in the league.
No power-play time.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 190. 1.38 miles a game is very little, and eight and a half minutes a night explains most of it. 21.0 mph top speed and 0.6 bursts over 20 mph a game.
Eighteen penalty minutes in twenty-nine games.
The Intangibles
Thirty-second overall in 2016, the second round, and 36 NHL games at 24 with 3 points, spread across two seasons.
He is from Edmonton and was drafted by Edmonton, and six years later the record is thirty-six games. A second-round winger who reaches 24 with three NHL points is at the end of the runway, and the softest shot the league has ever measured is not the file of a man about to score his way onto a roster.
What the repo cannot see is the passing, which was the argument for him at the draft and remains the only one available.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 249 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.2%
- 33rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.1%
- 79th 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: 6 for, 12 against. Expected: 8.3 and 9.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 33 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 — 42 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 · 29 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 13th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.62 a game
- Distance
- 1.38 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 73.1 mph
- 9th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 249 minutes at five-on-five
- Colton Sceviouroff the roster39%
- Ryan McLeod30%
- Kyle Turrisoff the roster27%
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
- EDM took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.2% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 249 minutes at five-on-five — 5th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colton Sceviour | 53.0% | 44.4% | 48.0% |
| Ryan McLeod | 42.3% | 49.3% | 49.7% |
| Cody Ceci | 53.1% | 44.7% | 51.3% |
53.0% together, 44.4% for him apart and 48.0% for Sceviour 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
24 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 5 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.