Zachary Sanford
Nashville Predators Left Wing
The 10th-percentile even-strength point rate, the 13th-percentile attempt share, and the 36th-softest shot of 365 forwards.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | WSH/STL | 39 | 4 | 4 | 8 | +2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 36 | 11.1 | 10:51 |
| 2018-19 | STL | 60 | 8 | 12 | 20 | +8 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 77 | 10.4 | 12:35 |
| 2019-20 | STL | 58 | 16 | 14 | 30 | +13 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 90 | 17.8 | 13:44 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 52 | 10 | 6 | 16 | -13 | 25 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 67 | 14.9 | 14:53 |
| 2021-22 | OTT/WPG | 80 | 9 | 12 | 21 | -15 | 50 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 104 | 8.6 | 14:18 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 289 | 47 | 48 | 95 | -5 | 134 | 5 | 1 | 10 | 374 | 12.6 | 13:28 |
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
80 games between Ottawa and Winnipeg, 9 goals and 12 assists at 14:18 a night, minus-15, fifty penalty minutes, 104 shots. Sixty-first overall in 2013 by Washington, five seasons, 289 games, 95 points.
Twenty-one points came from eighty games, more than he has played in any other season — against the thirty he managed in fifty-eight in 2019-20.
The Finesse Game
1.07 even-strength points per 60 is the 10th percentile — the lowest of any Nashville forward who will play a regular shift. 5.45 shots per 60 is the 17th percentile at 8.7 per cent.
83.6 mph is the 36th-softest shot of the 365 forwards the tracking covers. Fifty-five per cent of his shots came from the slot at a 21-foot median, which is where a man with that shot has to take them, and it still produced nine goals.
46.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 25th percentile and 45.2 per cent of the attempts the 13th — the worst attempt share of any forward on this roster. It came from 39.5 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 81st-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, which is genuinely hard.
His ice went 29-40 against an expectation of 37.61-42.64 — nine goals short going forward, and that is where the minus-15 came from.
1.89 takeaways per 60 is the 67th percentile against 1.15 giveaways at the 26th — the one part of the file that is clearly positive.
The Physical Game
8.86 hits per 60 is the 60th-most of 393 forwards at 6-4 and 206.
3.51 blocks per 60 is the 98th percentile among forwards, at 6-4 and 206 pounds in fourteen minutes a night.
1.05 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.94 taken. Fifty penalty minutes in eighty games.
The Intangibles
22.5 mph is the 55th percentile, 5.6 bursts per 60 the 56th, 9.35 miles per 60 the 25th. Ordinary speed and sprinting, below-average ground covered.
He is 27, and joins his third club inside twelve months. The blocks and the takeaways are real and the shot is among the softest in the league. A fourth-line winger who cannot score and does not shoot hard has a narrow job, and the blocks are the whole of it.
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.
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“3.51 blocks per 60 is the 98th percentile among forwards, at 6-4 and 206 pounds in fourteen minutes a night.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,005 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.2%
- 16th 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: 29 for, 40 against. Expected: 37.6 and 42.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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, 2021-22 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.32 a game
- Distance
- 2.23 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 83.6 mph
- 33rd 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 84.1
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
2021-22 with OTT · 764 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, 2021-22
- The club
- WPG took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 3.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,005 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Chabot | 45.2% | 47.5% | 50.0% |
| Artem Zub | 46.5% | 47.0% | 47.3% |
| Nick Holden | 45.0% | 47.4% | 48.0% |
45.2% together, 47.5% for him apart and 50.0% for Chabot apart. Chabot was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
165 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.