Zac Jones
New York Rangers Defense
Five foot eleven out of Richmond, Virginia, and 69 games in four seasons.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | NYR | 10 | 0 | 4 | 4 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0.0 | 14:59 |
| 2021-22 | NYR | 12 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 15:10 |
| 2022-23 | NYR | 16 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 15 | 6.7 | 15:37 |
| 2023-24 | NYR | 31 | 2 | 7 | 9 | +1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 42 | 4.8 | 14:38 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 69 | 3 | 14 | 17 | -10 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 77 | 3.9 | 15:00 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
31 games, 2 goals and 7 assists for 9 points, 8 penalty minutes, 14:38 a night and plus-1. He took 48.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 442 minutes, and his ice went 19-22 against an expectation of 17.83-18.82.
One goal of finishing above what the chances were worth and three more conceded than they called for. Thirty-one games in a fourth season, and four hundred and forty-two minutes is not enough to say much from.
The Finesse Game
51 attempts at a median of 39 feet with 43 per cent from beyond 40, 42 on goal, converted at 4.8 per cent.
14 career assists in 69 games. He skates and passes and that is the whole case — a thirty-nine-foot median is unusually close for a defenceman and it says he walks into the slot rather than shooting from the line.
The Physical Game
He is 5-11 and 190 and does not defend with contact.
14 career penalty minutes in 69 games is a very low rate. He does not clear the crease, does not win many walls, and the whole of the defending is feet and stick.
The Intangibles
A third-round pick in 2019 out of Richmond, Virginia, four seasons, and 17 points in 69 games, all of it for one organisation.
He is 24 and has sixty-nine games in four seasons behind a blue line that has not changed. A puck-moving left-hander on a club with Fox, Miller and Lindgren ahead of him has nowhere to go.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“He skates and passes and that is the whole case — a thirty-nine-foot median is unusually close for a defenceman and it says he walks into the slot rather than shooting from the line.”
“He is 5-11 and 190 and does not defend with contact.”
“He does not clear the crease, does not win many walls, and the whole of the defending is feet and stick.”
“He does not clear the crease, does not win many walls, and the whole of the defending is feet and stick.”
“He does not clear the crease, does not win many walls, and the whole of the defending is feet and stick.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 442 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.7%
- 44th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 53rd 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: 19 for, 22 against. Expected: 17.8 and 18.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 20 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2023-24 · 31 games
- Top speed
- 21.1 mph
- 23rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.23 a game
- Distance
- 2.15 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.0 mph
- 19th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 442 minutes at five-on-five
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, 2023-24
- The club
- NYR took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.7% — 1.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 442 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Braden Schneider | 46.4% | 51.4% | 49.9% |
| Vincent Trocheck | 56.3% | 43.4% | 54.8% |
| Alexis Lafrenière | 52.3% | 46.0% | 56.3% |
46.4% together, 51.4% for him apart and 49.9% for Schneider 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
51 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 43% from beyond forty.