Denton Mateychuk

5-11, 13 goals from the blue line, and a minus-21 in the goals column.

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

2024-25	CBJ	45	4	9	13	+4	20	0	0	0	44	9.1	18:02
2025-26	CBJ	75	13	18	31	+12	8	1	0	0	88	14.8	19:11
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	120	17	27	44	+16	28	1	0	0	132	12.9	18:45

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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 18 assists in 75 games — 31 points, plus-12, at 19:11 a night. His first full NHL season, at 21.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the whole engine and it is excellent — he escapes forecheckers by turning through them and he joins the rush as a genuine fourth attacker.

13 goals from a defenceman in his first full season is a striking number, and the shot chart says treat it carefully: 123 unblocked attempts from a median of 47 feet, only 12 per cent inside 20. 13 goals from that distance is a rate no defenceman sustains.

18 assists is the more repeatable half.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 188 pounds, and it is the familiar bargain. 8 penalty minutes in 75 games. He cannot clear his crease and he loses net-front battles to men 40 pounds heavier.

He compensates with feet and stick, ending plays before contact becomes available — the same solution Hutson and Zellweger run, and the same open question about what happens in a series.

The Intangibles

52.3 per cent of the expected goals, 72nd percentile — respectable for a rookie defenceman playing 19 minutes.

The goals underneath agree with it: 58-49 in his favour across 1,250 minutes, against expected goals of 57.5 to 52.5 — 4 better than predicted, which is a rookie defenceman’s ice doing what it was supposed to and a little more.

He is 21, the twelfth pick in 2022, and the plus-12 on his record is doing him no favours in either direction.

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

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
19.5% of his attempts in the slot, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 77 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.2%, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
disciplined· stays out of the box
0.11 penalty minutes a game over 75, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,250 minutes

Expected goals: 52.3%; 73rd pct
Shot attempts: 51.5%; 71st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 58 for, 49 against. Expected: 57.5 and 52.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

44th

Numbers

73rd

The numbers rank him 29 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 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, 2025-26 · 75 games

Top speed: 22.3 mph; 74th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.03 a game
Distance: 2.86 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.2 mph; 43rd 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 1 assists, 15 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1250 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, 2025-26

The club: CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.3% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,250 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Zach Werenski	52.3%	52.3%	55.9%
Adam Fantilli	52.6%	52.1%	52.2%
Kirill Marchenko	52.3%	52.3%	53.1%

52.3% together, 52.3% for him apart and 55.9% for Werenski apart. Werenski 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

123 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 63% from beyond forty.