Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

3

Adam Pelech

New York Islanders Defense

One goal on 71 shots, a career plus-75, and 26 goals in 500 games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16NYI9022-1000080.017:35
2016-17NYI443710-56000407.516:50
2017-18NYI7831619+7280011062.819:16
2018-19NYI7851621+22240001104.518:38
2019-20NYI38189+420000492.021:08
2020-21NYI5641014+1518010824.921:03
2021-22NYI7832528+20420001042.921:17
2022-23NYI6161521+1536000976.221:39
2023-24NYI5811516-227001711.420:17
2024-25 so far
Career50026114140+752010126673.919:59

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

58 games, 1 goal and 15 assists for 16 points, 27 penalty minutes, 20:17 a night and minus-2. He took 49.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 989 minutes, the 46th percentile, and his ice went 40-43 against an expectation of 37.64-38.86.

Two goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. Fifty-eight games from a man the club needs for eighty-two.

The Finesse Game

114 attempts at a median of 52 feet, with 5 per cent from inside twenty and 80 per cent from beyond forty, 71 on goal, converted at 1.4 per cent.

114 career assists in 500 games and 26 goals. One goal on seventy-one shots is the shot chart of a man who has never been asked to score and has never tried. The first pass is quick and accurate and that is the whole of the puck game.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 212 and defends with reach and a very early gap.

201 career penalty minutes in 500 games at twenty minutes a night is a low rate. He blocks shots, clears the crease, and kills penalties, and he does not need to hit anybody to do it.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2012 out of Toronto, nine seasons, 500 games and 140 points, all of it for one organisation, at a career plus-75.

He is 30 and a career plus-75 on Islanders clubs that have been outshot every year is the single most under-noticed number in this chapter. When he plays this club defends; he played fifty-eight games and the kill finished twenty-sixth.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 989 minutes

Expected goals
49.2%
47th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49%
46th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 43 against. Expected: 37.6 and 38.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
58th
Numbers
47th

The two rank him within 11 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 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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

2023-24 · 989 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, 2023-24

The club
NYI took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.2% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 989 minutes at five-on-five — 56th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Noah Dobson49.1%49.3%49.9%
Mathew Barzal51.2%48.0%53.3%
Bo Horvat49.1%49.3%54.4%

49.1% together, 49.3% for him apart and 49.9% for Dobson 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

114 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.