This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Zemgus Girgensons
Buffalo Sabres Center
Five hundred and forty-five games for one club, 0.72 giveaways per 60 — the 4th percentile — and an All-Star selection nobody has ever fully explained.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | BUF | 70 | 8 | 14 | 22 | -6 | 14 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 115 | 7.0 | 15:19 |
| 2014-15 | BUF | 61 | 15 | 15 | 30 | -16 | 25 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 115 | 13.0 | 19:05 |
| 2015-16 | BUF | 71 | 7 | 11 | 18 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 110 | 6.4 | 15:02 |
| 2016-17 | BUF | 75 | 7 | 9 | 16 | -7 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 112 | 6.3 | 13:10 |
| 2017-18 | BUF | 71 | 7 | 8 | 15 | -12 | 26 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 113 | 6.2 | 13:43 |
| 2018-19 | BUF | 72 | 5 | 13 | 18 | -11 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 6.4 | 13:37 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 69 | 12 | 7 | 19 | -1 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 85 | 14.1 | 13:48 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 56 | 10 | 8 | 18 | -7 | 27 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 92 | 10.9 | 14:47 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 545 | 71 | 85 | 156 | -60 | 157 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 820 | 8.7 | 14:44 |
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
10 goals and 8 assists in 56 games — 18 points at 14:47 a night, minus-7, with 3 power-play goals on 92 shots and 27 penalty minutes.
47.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 695 minutes, the 38th percentile. His ice went 19-24 against an expectation of 21.66-23.58 — three goals of scoring missing, and the goals against exactly where the chances said.
Ten goals is his most since 2014-15, when he was twenty-one and voted onto an All-Star team by the internet.
The Finesse Game
92 attempts at a median of 22 feet with 54 per cent from inside the slot, converting at 10.9 per cent. The locations are a centre’s and the volume is a fourth-liner’s — 6.67 shots per 60, the 37th percentile.
1.22 even-strength points per 60 is the 16th percentile and 156 points in 545 career games. There has never been scoring here beyond what standing in the right place produces.
0.72 giveaways per 60 is the 4th percentile among forwards. He does not lose the puck, because he moves it the instant it arrives.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 197, and 5.87 hits per 60 at the 69th percentile. 9.0 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 83rd percentile and he uses every one of them on a forecheck — a big man who gets to the first puck and finishes the check that follows.
1:27 a night shorthanded, the 71st percentile among forwards.
Top speed 22.1 mph at the 31st percentile. He accelerates well and does not have a top gear, which is the right shape for the job.
The Intangibles
Fourteenth overall in 2012, and 545 games for one club — the longest-serving player in the Buffalo dressing room and the only man left from before the rebuild before this one.
He is 28. He has outlasted four coaches, three general managers and two teardowns, and he is still a fourth-line centre who kills penalties. On a club whose whole identity is churn, that is worth something to somebody, and it is not worth very much on the ice.
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
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.
“9.0 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 83rd percentile and he uses every one of them on a forecheck”
“1:27 a night shorthanded, the 71st percentile among forwards”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 695 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.9%
- 38th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.6%
- 42nd 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, 24 against. Expected: 21.7 and 23.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 — 59 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 · 56 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 50th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.21 a game
- Distance
- 2.37 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.3 mph
- 79th 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 · 695 minutes at five-on-five
- Kyle Okposo60%
- Cody Eakinoff the roster44%
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
- BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.9% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 695 minutes at five-on-five — 31st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Okposo | 45.6% | 50.8% | 44.8% |
| Cody Eakin | 44.6% | 50.1% | 38.8% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 52.3% | 45.9% | 45.6% |
45.6% together, 50.8% for him apart and 44.8% for Okposo apart. He was better away from Okposo, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Okposo.
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
115 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.