Zach Bogosian

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

1 goal and 4 assists in 46 games — 5 points — at 14:59 a night. Minus-4, 54 shots at 1.9 per cent, 42 penalty minutes.

49.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 655 minutes, the 40th percentile, with his ice at 25-29 against an expectation of 28.88-29.74.

He started 51.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 53rd percentile, which is a neutral third-pair assignment.

Forty-six games, and he has not played sixty-five in a season since 2018-19.

The Finesse Game

54 shots at a median of 52 feet, with 74 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty.

Beyond forty feet: 41 shots on goal and one goal — 2.44 per cent, below the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: ten shots and none. Inside twenty: three shots and none.

Fifty-four shots on goal and one goal. A 1.9 per cent shooting percentage against a career 4.1 across 783 games.

And the slap-shot share is the highest of any defenceman in this chapter: 31 of his 73 tracked attempts, 42.5 per cent. His shot is measured at 97.3 mph, the 89th percentile.

So on this blue line the four men who played a thousand minutes convert from range at 6.96, 3.39, 2.50 and 0.00 per cent on slap shares of 21.3, 28.9, 20.5 and 24.2 — and the man who slaps 42.5 per cent of everything he throws converts at 2.44. Five defencemen, one club, and no relationship at all between the two numbers.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 231 pounds, and 715 penalty minutes in 783 career games — nearly a minute a game across fifteen seasons.

Top speed 22.0 mph at the 35th percentile, 0.7 bursts above twenty a game at the 36th, 2.18 miles a game at the 24th. An ordinary-to-slow line at thirty-two on fifteen minutes a night.

He is nasty and he fights, and the 42 penalty minutes in 46 games last season are the same rate he has carried since he was nineteen.

He clears the crease and takes the body at the net front, which alongside the fighting is what a third-pair defenceman of his description is dressed for.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2008, fifteen seasons, 783 games, 213 points across Atlanta, Winnipeg, Buffalo, Columbus, Toronto and Tampa Bay, and a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2020.

57 goals and 156 assists, and a minus-82 that belongs largely to nine seasons in Atlanta, Winnipeg and Buffalo.

A third-overall pick who has become a third-pair defenceman is a familiar outcome and not a disgraceful one: 783 games and a championship is a career.

He is thirty-three, on a club that has won two of the last four, and the job is forty-six games of the sixth defenceman’s minutes.