Photo by Gatarys, CC0

Arber Xhekaj

An undrafted, 6-4 enforcer in an era that supposedly does not have them.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2022-23	MTL	51	5	8	13	-9	101	2	0	0	75	6.7	15:16
2023-24	MTL	44	3	7	10	+6	81	0	0	0	61	4.9	15:56
2024-25	MTL	70	1	5	6	-13	118	0	0	0	69	1.5	14:37
2025-26	MTL	65	1	3	4	-8	116	0	0	0	40	2.5	11:25
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	230	10	23	33	-24	416	2	0	0	245	4.1	14:07

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 4 points in 65 games, minus-8, on 11 and a half minutes a night, with 116 penalty minutes — the most on the team by a distance and one of the higher totals in the league.

The Physical Game

The entire file, and it is a genuine one. 6-4 and 240, and he hits harder than anyone on this roster. He fights willingly and often, he clears the front of his own net with cross-checks, and opposing forwards behave differently when he is on the ice. On a team built around small, skilled players, that is not a novelty item — it is a reason the small skilled players get left alone.

He is a fair fighter by reputation and picks his moments better than the penalty total suggests.

The Finesse Game

Very little. 10 goals in 230 career games. He does not carry the puck, cannot make a play under pressure, and the first pass is often the glass. 40 shots in 65 games says a defenceman who is not looking to contribute offensively and is right not to.

The skating is the limitation that caps his minutes — he is beaten wide by quick wingers and cannot recover.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of junior, into an NHL lineup on sheer will. That happens perhaps once every few years, and it says something real about him.

The honest limit: 11 minutes a night, sheltered, and a minus-8 regardless. He is a specialist, the specialty still has value in April, and there are nights in a long season when a coach cannot dress him.

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

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
90.6% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 723 minutes

Expected goals: 46.5%; 25th pct
Shot attempts: 47.5%; 31st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 23 for, 31 against. Expected: 25.1 and 28.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

27th

Numbers

25th

The two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 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, 2025-26 · 65 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 55th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.25 a game
Distance: 1.60 miles a game
Hardest shot: 99.0 mph; 93rd pct

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 13 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 723 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, 2025-26

The club: MTL took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.5% — 3.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 723 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alexandre Carrier	47.6%	45.7%	50.0%
Brendan Gallagher	46.7%	46.4%	51.1%
Zachary Bolduc	43.1%	47.7%	53.7%

47.6% together, 45.7% for him apart and 50.0% for Carrier 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

64 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 91% from beyond forty.