This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Zemgus Girgensons
Buffalo Sabres Center
Ten goals, and twelve goals of scoring that never arrived on his ice.
| 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 | BUF | 80 | 10 | 8 | 18 | -5 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 114 | 8.8 | 12:59 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 625 | 81 | 93 | 174 | -65 | 171 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 934 | 8.7 | 14:30 |
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
10 goals and 8 assists in 80 games — 18 points at 12:59 a night, minus-5, on 114 shots, converting at 8.77 per cent, and 14 penalty minutes.
49.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 911 minutes, the 45th percentile — a perfectly reasonable number for a fourth-line centre. His ice went 21-29 against an expectation of 33.09-34.11. Twelve goals of scoring simply did not arrive, which is the largest shortfall on the roster and is a checking line with nobody who can finish.
The Finesse Game
114 attempts at a median of 24 feet, 37 per cent from inside 20, off a 91.6 mph shot at the 56th percentile.
81 goals and 174 points in 625 games across nine seasons is the honest measure. He gets to the right places and the finishing has never been there — ten goals is a good season for him rather than a poor one.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 197 and the compete is the whole of it. He forechecks hard, he blocks shots, and he kills penalties, and 171 penalty minutes in 625 games says he does all of it without taking many.
The skating is good: 22.8 mph at the 76th percentile with 1.8 bursts a game at the 81st. He covers only 2.08 miles at the 19th percentile, which is a thirteen-minute role rather than a lack of effort.
The Intangibles
Fourteenth overall in 2012, out of Latvia, and he was voted into the All-Star Game by an internet campaign from his home country — which remains the strangest line in his file and a genuinely touching one.
He is 29 and has played his entire career here, through the whole of the drought. He is the longest-serving Sabre and the least likely to be part of the club’s first good team, which is the ordinary cruelty of a rebuild.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.17 penalty minutes a game over 80, 8th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He forechecks hard, he blocks shots, and he kills penalties”
“He forechecks hard, he blocks shots, and he kills penalties”
“He forechecks hard, he blocks shots, and he kills penalties”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 911 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.2%
- 45th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 71st 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: 21 for, 29 against. Expected: 33.1 and 34.1.
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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 911 minutes at five-on-five
- Kyle Okposo79%
- Peyton Krebs56%
- Tyson Jost24%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.2% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 911 minutes at five-on-five — 49th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Okposo | 49.8% | 47.0% | 49.1% |
| Peyton Krebs | 48.2% | 50.4% | 44.9% |
| Owen Power | 45.3% | 51.6% | 50.2% |
49.8% together, 47.0% for him apart and 49.1% for Okposo apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
160 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.