Victor Mete

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

37 games for Ottawa, no goals and 7 assists at 14:37 a night, minus-19, four penalty minutes, 27 shots. Hundredth overall in 2016 by Montreal — the fourth round — five seasons, 236 games, 43 points.

Thirty-seven games is short of the forty this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.

The Finesse Game

Five goals in 236 NHL games across five seasons. Twenty-seven shots last year from a 46-foot median with ten per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet, and none of them went in.

44.5 per cent of the expected goals across 460 five-on-five minutes, out of 42.2 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 121st-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

His ice went 10-29 against an expectation of 16.91-21.09. Seven short in front and eight more against than the model asked, across thirty-seven games, which is where a minus-19 in a third of a season comes from.

Ottawa finished 21st in the standings and 21st in attempt share, so the club explains part of it and not that part.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 187 pounds, the smallest defenceman on this roster, and four penalty minutes in thirty-seven games — forty-two across a 236-game career. He does not take penalties and he cannot afford to.

The Intangibles

A 23.0 mph top speed would be the 87th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers if he had the games to qualify, against 1.2 bursts a game and 2.18 miles a game.

The speed is the whole asset and it is the thing a 5-9 defenceman needs most. Nothing here measures edges, pivots or how he escapes a forecheck, which for this archetype is where the case would have to be made, and the record cannot make it.

His shot is 83.4 mph, the 6th percentile — among the twenty softest of the 192 defencemen the tracking measures.

He is 24, with forty-three points and five goals in 236 games across five seasons and two organisations. The speed and 236 NHL games before 25 are the case. No goals in thirty-seven games, one of the softest shots at the position and a minus-19 in a third of a season are why a small defenceman without production is a seventh man.