This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Urho Vaakanainen
Anaheim Ducks Defense
Sixty-eight NHL games without a goal, and a minus-16 in twenty-three of them.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | BOS | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 9:06 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 16:51 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0.0 | 18:55 |
| 2021-22 | BOS/ANA | 29 | 0 | 6 | 6 | -5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 19:19 |
| 2022-23 | ANA | 23 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 16:27 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 68 | 0 | 10 | 10 | -23 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 0.0 | 17:49 |
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
No goals and 2 assists in 23 games — 16:27 a night, minus-16, on 27 shots and no penalty minutes at all.
39 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 365 minutes, the 3rd percentile. His ice went 6-22 against an expectation of 12.15-19.02 — six goals of scoring missing and three more conceded than the chances predicted, which is the worst combination on the roster and part of why the minus is what it is in so few games.
The Finesse Game
27 attempts at a median of 54 feet, none from inside 20 and 82 per cent from beyond 40, and no goals. Ten points in 68 career NHL games, all of them assists.
There is no offence and there is not likely to be any. The passing out of the zone is tidy when he is given time and disappears when he is not.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 202, and he does not play a physical game — no penalty minutes in 23 games and 12 in 68 for his career, which for a defenceman is less discipline than absence.
The skating is unremarkable at 21.4 mph, the 11th percentile. He is not fast, he is not heavy, and neither the puck-moving nor the defending is yet good enough to make that irrelevant.
The Intangibles
Eighteenth overall in 2017 to Boston, and he arrived here in the Hampus Lindholm trade, which is a difficult place to start.
He is 24 and has played 68 NHL games in five professional seasons. This is close to the last chance: a club that finished thirty-second will give him every opportunity, and a defenceman who cannot hold a job on the worst team in hockey is telling you something.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 365 minutes
- Expected goals
- 39%
- 3rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.6%
- 15th 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, 22 against. Expected: 12.2 and 19.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 0 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 49 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
2022-23 · 365 minutes at five-on-five
- Simon Benoitnow TOR18%
- John Klingbergnow TOR11%
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
- ANA took 39.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.0% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 365 minutes at five-on-five — 9th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Shattenkirk | 37.4% | 40.5% | 43.2% |
| Troy Terry | 46.3% | 34.9% | 45.3% |
| Mason McTavish | 37.3% | 39.8% | 42.3% |
37.4% together, 40.5% for him apart and 43.2% for Shattenkirk apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
38 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 0 of them goals. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.