Dennis Cholowski

39 games, 10 points, and a seventh defenceman on his fifth organisation.

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

2018-19	DET	52	7	9	16	-20	16	4	0	1	71	9.9	18:15
2019-20	DET	36	2	6	8	-26	6	1	0	1	51	3.9	19:13
2020-21	DET	16	1	2	3	-1	4	0	0	0	10	10.0	15:54
2021-22	WSH/SEA	11	0	3	3	-3	2	0	0	0	11	0.0	15:49
2022-23	NYI	2	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	0	—	12:47
2024-25	NYI/NJD	39	3	7	10	-3	10	0	0	0	30	10.0	13:05
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	156	13	27	40	-54	38	5	0	2	173	7.5	16:42

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

3 goals and 7 assists in 39 games for 10 points, minus-3, on 13:05 a night.

46.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 19th percentile, over 460 minutes. 30 shots with 83 per cent from beyond 40 feet and 2 per cent from inside 20.

The Finesse Game

Modest. The skating is fine and the first pass is adequate under moderate pressure, and 10 points in 39 games is a fair depth return.

He was a first-round pick for an offensive game that has never appeared at this level across seven professional seasons.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 210, and neither heavy nor especially willing. He does not clear a net front and loses more board battles than he wins.

10 penalty minutes over 39 games. Disciplined.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, five organisations, and a career spent between the two leagues.

The projection is a seventh defenceman. That is the role and the price is right.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 460 minutes

Expected goals: 46.1%; 20th pct
Shot attempts: 44.9%; 11th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 9 for, 11 against. Expected: 13.6 and 15.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

6th

Numbers

20th

The two rank him within 14 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with NYI · 379 minutes at five-on-five

Scott Mayfield50%
Grant Huttonoff the roster16%
Noah Dobsonnow MTL14%

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: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.1% — 4.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: 460 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Scott Mayfield	49.5%	43.1%	46.5%
Casey Cizikas	50.9%	44.3%	48.7%
Anders Lee	50.3%	44.6%	51.5%

49.5% together, 43.1% for him apart and 46.5% for Mayfield 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

42 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.