This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Bryan Rust

Fifty-two per cent of his shot attempts came from inside 20 feet — the highest share on the club — and he scored 31 goals in 71 games at 32.

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

2014-15	PIT	14	1	1	2	-3	4	0	0	0	34	2.9	12:02
2015-16	PIT	41	4	7	11	+1	12	0	0	1	68	5.9	12:30
2016-17	PIT	57	15	13	28	+4	8	0	0	1	110	13.6	13:38
2017-18	PIT	69	13	25	38	+11	26	2	2	3	123	10.6	16:03
2018-19	PIT	72	18	17	35	+10	24	0	2	4	141	12.8	15:54
2019-20	PIT	55	27	29	56	+14	30	8	1	4	151	17.9	19:46
2020-21	PIT	56	22	20	42	+9	18	6	0	6	154	14.3	19:43
2021-22	PIT	60	24	34	58	+7	14	9	0	1	180	13.3	18:46
2022-23	PIT	81	20	26	46	-4	31	2	0	2	211	9.5	17:54
2023-24	PIT	62	28	28	56	+10	20	3	1	3	196	14.3	19:35
2024-25	PIT	71	31	34	65	-21	18	5	0	5	191	16.2	19:45
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	638	203	234	437	+38	205	35	6	30	1559	13.0	17:23

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

31 goals and 34 assists in 71 games — 65 points, at 19:45 a night, with 5 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 191 shots. Minus-21.

48.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 37th percentile. His ice went 56-64 against an expectation of 47.47-50.73 — twelve goals of scoring missing and ten fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

191 attempts at a median of 19 feet with 52 per cent of them from inside 20 feet — the highest share of any forward on this roster — converting at 16.2 per cent. He has scored 31, 28 and 20 goals in three of the last four seasons and the method has not changed.

The skating is the reason it works. He arrives at the net first, off the rush, and 34 assists says he can also make the play when the goaltender takes away the first option.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 202 and he forechecks like a man half a foot taller. He is first in, he finishes the check, and he is difficult to move once he has established position in front.

18 penalty minutes in 71 games is a low rate for a player who plays that way. He does not retaliate and he does not take the foul after being beaten.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2010 who spent three years in the American League, and 638 games and 437 points later has two Stanley Cups and a reputation for scoring in May.

He is 33, he has been here his entire career, and he signed a six-year extension in 2022. On a club whose top six is 38, 39, 37 and 32, he is the second-youngest man on it.

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.

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.

net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He arrives at the net first, off the rush, and 34 assists says he can also make the play when the goaltender takes away the first option.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He is first in, he finishes the check, and he is difficult to move once he has established position in front.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is first in, he finishes the check, and he is difficult to move once he has established position in front.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“He does not retaliate and he does not take the foul after being beaten.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not retaliate and he does not take the foul after being beaten.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,014 minutes

Expected goals: 48.3%; 37th pct
Shot attempts: 50%; 52nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 56 for, 64 against. Expected: 47.5 and 50.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

91st

Numbers

37th

The report ranks him 54 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 81 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 · 71 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 74th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.27 a game
Distance: 3.08 miles a game
Hardest shot: 81.1 mph; 24th 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1014 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, 2024-25

The club: PIT took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.3% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,014 minutes at five-on-five — 63rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sidney Crosby	50.8%	35.8%	53.2%
Rickard Rakell	51.2%	43.3%	52.7%
Erik Karlsson	49.0%	47.6%	48.8%

50.8% together, 35.8% for him apart and 53.2% for Crosby apart. He was worse away from Crosby, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Crosby did.

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

278 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.