This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Beck Malenstyn
Buffalo Sabres Left Wing
10 points in 76 games, a minus-16, and 652 minutes of fourth-line hockey at the 18th percentile.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | WSH | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0.0 | 9:16 |
| 2021-22 | WSH | 12 | 1 | 0 | 1 | +2 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10.0 | 9:03 |
| 2022-23 | WSH | 9 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 14.3 | 9:55 |
| 2023-24 | WSH | 81 | 6 | 15 | 21 | -1 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 98 | 6.1 | 14:15 |
| 2024-25 | BUF | 76 | 4 | 6 | 10 | -16 | 29 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 6.0 | 10:32 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 181 | 12 | 22 | 34 | -16 | 65 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 186 | 6.5 | 12:03 |
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
4 goals and 6 assists in 76 games for 10 points, minus-16, on 10:32 a night.
44.0 per cent at five-on-five, the 12th percentile. On-ice goals of 16-28 against an expected 19-24, which means the fourth line was three goals short at one end and four conceded above expectation at the other, and finished minus-16 overall.
The Finesse Game
There is very little. 67 shots in 76 games and 4 goals, and no meaningful playmaking — 6 assists in a full season is a description rather than a slump.
He gets the puck deep and goes and gets it, which is done properly and at speed. Nothing more should be expected.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 209, and this is the job. He is among the league’s more frequent hitters and he forechecks with genuine force, and he does not fight for the sake of it.
29 penalty minutes over 76 games is disciplined for the style and is the best thing in his record after the hit totals.
The Intangibles
A fifth-round pick who took seven years to become an NHL regular, entirely on effort.
The projection is a fourth-line winger who kills penalties and hits. On a club that has missed the playoffs fourteen years running, 76 games of a forward with 10 points is a use of a roster spot that deserves a harder question than it usually gets.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
35% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 10th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“no meaningful playmaking — 6 assists in a full season is a description rather than a slump”
“he forechecks with genuine force”
“He is among the league's more frequent hitters”
“The projection is a fourth-line winger who kills penalties and hits.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 652 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44%
- 12th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.6%
- 22nd 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: 16 for, 28 against. Expected: 18.5 and 23.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 77th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.58 a game
- Distance
- 1.71 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.5 mph
- 49th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 · 652 minutes at five-on-five
- Peyton Krebs41%
- Ryan McLeod23%
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
- BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.0% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 652 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sam Lafferty | 42.9% | 45.3% | 41.3% |
| Peyton Krebs | 42.1% | 45.4% | 48.6% |
| Bowen Byram | 47.5% | 42.0% | 49.0% |
42.9% together, 45.3% for him apart and 41.3% for Lafferty 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
100 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.