This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Tyler Motte
Tampa Bay Lightning Center
The 95th percentile of top speed, the sixth percentile of zone starts, and eight goals.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CHI | 33 | 4 | 3 | 7 | +2 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 8.7 | 11:23 |
| 2017-18 | CBJ/VAN | 46 | 5 | 2 | 7 | -4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 64 | 7.8 | 11:13 |
| 2018-19 | VAN | 74 | 9 | 7 | 16 | -12 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 114 | 7.9 | 12:46 |
| 2019-20 | VAN | 34 | 4 | 4 | 8 | -10 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 10.5 | 13:07 |
| 2020-21 | VAN | 24 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 40 | 15.0 | 16:01 |
| 2021-22 | VAN/NYR | 58 | 7 | 8 | 15 | +2 | 22 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 101 | 6.9 | 14:01 |
| 2022-23 | OTT/NYR | 62 | 8 | 11 | 19 | +3 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 109 | 7.3 | 12:35 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 331 | 43 | 38 | 81 | -19 | 82 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 512 | 8.4 | 12:52 |
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
8 goals and 11 assists in 62 games — 19 points — at 12:35 a night between Ottawa and the Rangers. Plus-3, 109 shots at 7.3 per cent, one shorthanded, one game-winner, 6 penalty minutes.
Six penalty minutes in sixty-two games from a forward who plays this way is one of the cleanest records in this book.
46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 643 minutes, the 24th percentile, with his ice at 22-22 against an expectation of 24.30-27.62 — six goals better than the chances at the defensive end.
He started 34.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 6th percentile: 113 attacking draws against 211 defensive ones.
A 24th-percentile chance share out of the sixth percentile of zone starts is a good fourth-line season, and the plus-3 that came with it is earned rather than lucky.
The Finesse Game
109 shots at a median of 19 feet, with 54 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty.
Inside twenty feet: 52 shots on goal and five goals — 9.62 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 26 shots and two goals, 7.69 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 22 shots and one goal.
Well below the rate from close range on fifty-two shots, and a 7.3 per cent shooting percentage against a career 8.4 across 512 shots. The finishing has never been there and the volume is genuinely good for the role: a hundred and nine shots in twelve and a half minutes a night is a first-line rate of shot generation from a fourth-line winger.
140 tracked attempts, none of them slap shots, 22 backhands and 19 tip-ins. 88.4 mph at the 33rd percentile.
That is the shot chart of a forechecker: everything from close in, nothing from a set position, and a great deal of it generated by arriving before the defenceman has turned.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 194 pounds, and a top speed of 23.3 mph at the 95th percentile with 1.3 bursts above twenty a game at the 67th, on 2.01 miles a game at the 16th.
He is genuinely one of the fastest forwards in this book and plays twelve minutes a night on a fourth line, which is the whole of the tension in this file.
He forechecks first man at full speed and finishes the check, and the speed is what makes a 5-10 winger’s forecheck matter against defencemen sixty pounds heavier.
6 penalty minutes in 62 games and 82 in 331 career games. He is physical and remarkably disciplined about it.
He kills penalties, which alongside the forecheck is why five clubs have wanted him in four years.
The Intangibles
A hundred and twenty-first overall in 2013, the fourth round, seven seasons, 331 games, 81 points across Chicago, Columbus, Vancouver, Ottawa and the Rangers.
43 goals in seven years, and four career shorthanded goals. He has never scored more than nine in a season.
He is twenty-eight, joining his sixth club, and the role has been identical at every one of them: twelve minutes, the hard end of the rink, a functional chance share, and no points.
What this file records is a genuinely fast, genuinely disciplined fourth-line winger, and the reason he keeps moving is that nobody has ever paid much for one.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.10 penalty minutes a game over 62, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
35% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 10th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He forechecks first man at full speed and finishes the check, and the speed is what makes a 5-10 winger's forecheck matter against defencemen sixty pounds heavier.”
“He kills penalties, which alongside the forecheck is why five clubs have wanted him in four years.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 643 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.8%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.7%
- 20th 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: 22 for, 22 against. Expected: 24.3 and 27.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 43 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 71 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 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 23.3 mph
- 96th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.32 a game
- Distance
- 2.01 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.4 mph
- 58th 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 84.9
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 with OTT · 405 minutes at five-on-five
- Shane Pinto37%
- Derick Brassardoff the roster22%
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
- NYR took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 643 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathieu Joseph | 48.2% | 46.0% | 49.4% |
| Barclay Goodrow | 54.5% | 42.9% | 44.6% |
| Jimmy Vesey | 51.9% | 44.4% | 53.9% |
48.2% together, 46.0% for him apart and 49.4% for Joseph apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
129 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.