This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Chad Ruhwedel
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
Undrafted, 312 games as a seventh defenceman, and 79 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-13 | BUF | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 14:12 |
| 2013-14 | BUF | 21 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 0.0 | 17:53 |
| 2014-15 | BUF | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0.0 | 12:28 |
| 2015-16 | BUF | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 15:30 |
| 2016-17 | PIT | 34 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +9 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 45 | 4.4 | 17:20 |
| 2017-18 | PIT | 44 | 2 | 3 | 5 | -8 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 3.0 | 15:44 |
| 2018-19 | PIT | 18 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 22 | 4.5 | 16:17 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 41 | 2 | 4 | 6 | +4 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 4.5 | 14:46 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 17 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +3 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 0.0 | 14:42 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 78 | 4 | 9 | 13 | +2 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 4.9 | 15:20 |
| 2022-23 | PIT | 47 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -4 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 2.8 | 14:34 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 312 | 12 | 33 | 45 | -3 | 90 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 360 | 3.3 | 15:33 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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 assists in 47 games — 5 points — at 14:34 a night. Minus-4, 36 shots at 2.8 per cent, 18 penalty minutes.
53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 596 minutes, the 72nd percentile, with his ice at 21-26 against an expectation of 28.04-24.80 — seven goals short at the good end, which on a third pair is mostly the finishing of the men in front of him.
He started 51.5 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 55th percentile. He is the one defenceman on this roster the club deploys without a preference in either direction.
The Finesse Game
36 shots at a median of 55 feet — the longest median on the club — with 79 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty, the highest share of any Pittsburgh defenceman.
Beyond forty feet: 26 shots on goal, no goals. From twenty to forty: six shots, one goal. Inside twenty: three shots, none. Thirty-five shots on goal and one went in.
59 tracked attempts, 41 of them wrist shots and eight slap. 95.3 mph at the 80th percentile, which is a hard shot on a very small number of chances to use it.
Twelve goals in 312 career games at a 3.3 per cent shooting percentage. The shot is not part of the job and never has been.
The first pass is quick and short. He plays the simple option every time and it is the reason he has lasted eleven seasons without ever being a regular.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 189 pounds, which is small for a defenceman and is most of the reason he was never drafted.
Top speed 22.6 mph at the 70th percentile, 0.5 bursts above twenty a game at the 24th, 2.05 miles a game at the 18th. Short shifts, ordinary speed, no distance.
18 penalty minutes in 47 games and 90 in 312 career games. He does not hit and cannot afford to: at 189 pounds the defensive game is angles and stick position rather than contact.
He blocks shots and gets in lanes, which is the third-pair currency and the part of his game the club has always used.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of eleven seasons and 312 games across Buffalo and Pittsburgh.
Seven of those seasons here, none of them above 78 games, and two of them under twenty. He is the seventh defenceman and has been for a decade.
He is thirty-three. The value of the file is exactly what it looks like: a club that plays four defencemen heavy minutes needs a man who can dress forty-seven times without the record falling apart, and a 72nd-percentile chance share out of that role is a good season.
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
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.
“5-11 and 189 pounds, which is small for a defenceman and is most of the reason he was never drafted.”
“He blocks shots and gets in lanes, which is the third-pair currency and the part of his game the club has always used.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 596 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.1%
- 76th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.7%
- 77th 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: 21 for, 26 against. Expected: 28.0 and 24.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 52 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2022-23 · 47 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.47 a game
- Distance
- 2.05 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.3 mph
- 73rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 596 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, 2022-23
- The club
- PIT took 53.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.1% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 596 minutes at five-on-five — 22nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pierre-Olivier Joseph | 55.1% | 50.4% | 50.9% |
| Evgeni Malkin | 51.4% | 54.1% | 55.6% |
| Jason Zucker | 50.1% | 54.7% | 56.6% |
55.1% together, 50.4% for him apart and 50.9% for Joseph apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
58 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.