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

Chandler Stephenson

38 assists in the first year of a seven-year contract, and the second-worst chance share of any forward in this edition.

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

2015-16	WSH	9	0	0	0	-3	2	0	0	0	2	0.0	7:51
2016-17	WSH	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	8:53
2017-18	WSH	67	6	12	18	+13	8	0	0	0	36	16.7	11:52
2018-19	WSH	64	5	6	11	-13	0	0	1	0	36	13.9	12:07
2019-20	WSH/VGK	65	11	15	26	+24	16	1	2	5	73	15.1	14:19
2020-21	VGK	51	14	21	35	+22	29	2	1	5	83	16.9	18:06
2021-22	VGK	79	21	43	64	+5	26	6	1	3	125	16.8	19:19
2022-23	VGK	81	16	49	65	+12	26	6	1	5	120	13.3	19:01
2023-24	VGK	75	16	35	51	-9	25	4	2	4	97	16.5	18:29
2024-25	SEA	78	13	38	51	-9	24	1	2	1	73	17.8	19:31
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	573	102	219	321	+42	156	20	10	23	648	15.7	16:35

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

13 goals and 38 assists in 78 games — 51 points at 19:31 a night, minus-9, with 2 shorthanded goals on only 73 shots.

41.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 8th percentile — among the worst marks of any regular forward in this edition. His ice went 44-52 against an expectation of 33.93-47.91: nine goals better than expected for and four fewer against, which is a line that was thoroughly outplayed and came out level anyway.

The Finesse Game

73 shots in 78 games is a remarkably low number for a first-line centre, and he converted 13 of them — a 17.8 per cent rate that is the second-highest on the club and will not repeat.

38 assists is what he is for. He is a distributor who carries the puck through the middle at speed and gives it up before the defence sets, and he is much better with finishers around him than he was last season.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 201 and he plays a light game. He does not forecheck with force and he does not win a puck below the goal line.

24 penalty minutes in 78 games. The value is the skating — he is among the faster centres in the league and he uses it to recover defensively rather than to hit anything.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2012 who won a Stanley Cup in Washington as a fourth-line centre and another in Vegas as a first-line one — 573 games and 321 points.

He is 31 and signed a seven-year contract with Seattle in the summer of 2024. The first year of it was the worst possession season of his career.

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.

durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He is a distributor who carries the puck through the middle at speed and gives it up before the defence sets, and he is much better with finishers around him than he was last season.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck with force and he does not win a puck below the goal line.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck with force and he does not win a puck below the goal line.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,052 minutes

Expected goals: 41.5%; 6th pct
Shot attempts: 45.5%; 15th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 52 against. Expected: 33.9 and 47.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

42nd

Numbers

6th

The report ranks him 36 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 — 71 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 · 78 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 77th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.13 a game
Distance: 3.11 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.3 mph; 47th 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 · 1052 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: SEA took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.5% — 5.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,052 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brandon Montour	42.7%	40.6%	50.3%
Adam Larsson	40.2%	42.3%	49.0%
Andre Burakovsky	38.2%	43.3%	50.9%

42.7% together, 40.6% for him apart and 50.3% for Montour apart. Montour was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

101 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 35% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.