CBJ Fans Could Be Shocked At Who The Fastest Skaters Have Been

Columbus Blue Jacket fans crave statistics, and now the NHL has a site where you can look up every single CBJ player and see some unique stats that you wouldn’t normally see. NHL EDGE is here, and I think you’ll love it.

The site has per-player stats, team stats, and dives into data like skating speed, shot velocity, as well as offensive, defensive, and neutral zone time. One cool stat it has is the total distance skated by a player. It breaks down the distance in all three zones, as well as different situations such as EV, PP, and PK. I personally love this one.

One stat that CBJ fans should be interested in looking at is skating speed. There are three measurable categories that EDGE provides, Max Speed, 22 mph+ bursts, and 20 mph+ bursts. Per the EDGE website: “Max speed measures the maximum sustained skating speed a player has achieved during the current season. Bursts measure the number of times a skater achieved a sustained speed above a given threshold.” All Skaters, Forwards, and defensemen are how this stat is broken down.

There are a couple of CBJ defensemen we need to talk about.

For defenseman, the Blue Jackets' own Zach Werenski leads all NHL defensemen in the Max Speed Category. Werenski sits at 23.50 mph as a max speed. Jake Sanderson and Jakob Chychrun are the defensemen below him at 23 mph and under. As a comparison, in the All-Skaters category, Werenski sits 3rd in the NHL, tied with Adrian Kempe of the LA Kings. Werenski’s top max speed happened in Saturday’s game against the Minnesota Wild in overtime. Werenski was also clocked as having one 22 mph + burst this season. Jack Roslovic is listed as having four 22 mph + bursts so far this season.

Normally Jackets fans wouldn’t look at these two names and think that they would be anywhere near the fastest players on the ice. Names like Johnny Gaudreau, Adam Fantilli, and Alex Texier would be the players associated with speed, but here we are, talking about Zach Werenski and Jack Roslovic.

I highly encourage you to look at the site. You can look at any team and any player. Some of these stats will be interesting to monitor as the season progresses, to see what players get better, or worse.

There are tons of other categories you can look at, so I encourage you to do so. 

Join Jason Newland's Columbus Blue Jacket page on Bunches, a new app that connects sports fans. Also, you can watch a new YouTube game show about the Blue Jackets, Around the Fifth Line.