Chad Ruhwedel

Undrafted out of San Diego, twelve seasons, 364 games, and not one attempt from inside twenty 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	PIT/NYR	52	1	3	4	-6	4	0	0	0	35	2.9	12:42
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	364	13	36	49	-9	94	0	0	1	395	3.3	15:08

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

52 games, 1 goal and 3 assists for 4 points, 4 penalty minutes, 12:42 a night and minus-6. He took 47.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 574 minutes, the 32nd percentile, and his ice went 16-22 against an expectation of 19.32-21.70.

Three goals of scoring that did not arrive and level at the other end. Fifty-two games from a seventh defenceman on a club that finished first is the whole assignment.

The Finesse Game

53 attempts at a median of 58 feet, 91 per cent of them from beyond forty and not one from inside twenty, 35 on goal, converted at 2.9 per cent, which is his career rate.

36 career assists in 364 games and 13 goals. There is no offence and there never was. He puts it at the net from the point or off the glass, and nothing else.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 189 and defends entirely with position.

94 career penalty minutes in 364 games is one of the lowest rates in the league. He blocks shots and holds his gap, and he cannot clear a crease at that size.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of San Diego, three years at Massachusetts-Lowell, twelve seasons across three organisations, and 49 points in 364 games.

He is 34 and undrafted and has played three hundred and sixty-four games. That is a career, and playing fifty-two of them for the best club in the league at 34 is the end of one.

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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 52, 0th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
27% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots and holds his gap, and he cannot clear a crease at that size.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He blocks shots and holds his gap, and he cannot clear a crease at that size.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is 5-11 and 189 and defends entirely with position.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He puts it at the net from the point or off the glass, and nothing else.”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, out of San Diego, three years at Massachusetts-Lowell, twelve seasons across three organisations, and 49 points in 364 games.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 574 minutes

Expected goals: 47.1%; 33rd pct
Shot attempts: 46.4%; 24th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 22 against. Expected: 19.3 and 21.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

6th

Numbers

33rd

The numbers rank him 27 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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, 2023-24 · 52 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.29 a game
Distance: 1.80 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.2 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

2023-24 with PIT · 509 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, 2023-24

The club: NYR took 50.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.1% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
The role: 574 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ryan Graves	47.5%	46.9%	49.1%
Lars Eller	47.2%	47.0%	51.4%
Drew O'Connor	56.5%	42.2%	49.4%

47.5% together, 46.9% for him apart and 49.1% for Graves 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

53 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 91% from beyond forty.