This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Adam Pelech
New York Islanders Defense
The 89th percentile in chance share, and zero goals in 60 games on 109 shots.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | NYI | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 17:35 |
| 2016-17 | NYI | 44 | 3 | 7 | 10 | -5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 7.5 | 16:50 |
| 2017-18 | NYI | 78 | 3 | 16 | 19 | +7 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 106 | 2.8 | 19:16 |
| 2018-19 | NYI | 78 | 5 | 16 | 21 | +22 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 110 | 4.5 | 18:38 |
| 2019-20 | NYI | 38 | 1 | 8 | 9 | +4 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 2.0 | 21:08 |
| 2020-21 | NYI | 56 | 4 | 10 | 14 | +15 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 82 | 4.9 | 21:03 |
| 2021-22 | NYI | 78 | 3 | 25 | 28 | +20 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 104 | 2.9 | 21:17 |
| 2022-23 | NYI | 61 | 6 | 15 | 21 | +15 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 97 | 6.2 | 21:39 |
| 2023-24 | NYI | 58 | 1 | 15 | 16 | -2 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 71 | 1.4 | 20:17 |
| 2024-25 | NYI | 60 | 0 | 21 | 21 | +4 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 109 | 0.0 | 21:07 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 560 | 26 | 135 | 161 | +79 | 233 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 776 | 3.4 | 20:07 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
60 games, 0 goals and 21 assists at 21:07 a night, on 109 shots without scoring. 32 penalty minutes. Plus-4.
A 54.8 per cent chance share is the 89th percentile in the league and by a distance the best on this club. The on-ice goals were 37-37 against an expected 43.84-35.58, meaning his line conceded seven more than the chances warranted despite controlling play more thoroughly than any other pairing on the roster. That is bad luck rather than bad defending, and it makes the plus-4 look ordinary when the underlying season was excellent.
The Finesse Game
Zero goals on 109 attempts, with 79 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet at a median of 55. That is a shot with no threat attached, and the goaltender is not moved by it.
Everything else is quietly very good. He reads a breakout before it forms, his first pass is quick and accurate under pressure, and 21 assists from a defenceman who scores nothing is a man whose value is entirely in moving the puck to somebody who can.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 212 and he defends with position, stick and timing rather than with force. He does not run anybody and he is very rarely beaten to a spot.
32 penalty minutes in 60 games is fair. The durability is the persistent issue: he has now missed meaningful time in four of the last five seasons, and this club has no equivalent behind him.
The Intangibles
A third-round pick and ten seasons in one organisation, and the most underappreciated defenceman in this chapter by a wide margin.
Nobody is going to notice a defenceman with no goals, and he posted the 89th percentile in chance share on a club that finished 19th at suppressing them. The two facts belong on the same page, and only one of them will ever be read from a box score.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
55.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.1, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“21 assists from a defenceman who scores nothing is a man whose value is entirely in moving the puck to somebody who can.”
“6-3 and 212 and he defends with position, stick and timing rather than with force.”
“He does not run anybody”
“he is very rarely beaten to a spot”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,048 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.2%
- 91st pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.3%
- 94th 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: 37 for, 37 against. Expected: 43.8 and 35.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 66 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2024-25 · 60 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 89th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.48 a game
- Distance
- 2.99 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.9 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1048 minutes at five-on-five
- Ryan Pulock45%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- NYI took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.2% — 5.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,048 minutes at five-on-five — 67th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Pulock | 47.0% | 61.4% | 44.7% |
| Kyle Palmieri | 51.5% | 56.9% | 47.5% |
| Anders Lee | 54.9% | 55.3% | 52.2% |
47.0% together, 61.4% for him apart and 44.7% for Pulock apart. He was better away from Pulock, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Pulock.
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
171 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 0 of them goals. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.