This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Derek Ryan
Edmonton Oilers Center
The 2nd-softest recorded shot of the 365 qualified forwards, and the 35th-most ground covered — at eleven and a half minutes a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | CAR | 6 | 2 | 0 | 2 | +1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 40.0 | 12:12 |
| 2016-17 | CAR | 67 | 11 | 18 | 29 | -8 | 22 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 73 | 15.1 | 14:53 |
| 2017-18 | CAR | 80 | 15 | 23 | 38 | -15 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 135 | 11.1 | 15:36 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 81 | 13 | 25 | 38 | +21 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 103 | 12.6 | 13:48 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 68 | 10 | 19 | 29 | +9 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 102 | 9.8 | 14:33 |
| 2020-21 | CGY | 43 | 2 | 11 | 13 | +6 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 5.4 | 11:53 |
| 2021-22 | EDM | 75 | 10 | 12 | 22 | -4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 72 | 13.9 | 11:26 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 420 | 63 | 108 | 171 | +10 | 110 | 11 | 2 | 7 | 527 | 11.9 | 13:48 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
10 goals and 12 assists in 75 games — 22 points, a minus-4 and 8 penalty minutes at 11:26 a night, the 8th percentile among forwards. 1:43 a night short-handed is the 81st percentile.
51.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 726 minutes, the 63rd percentile — a positive share, from the fourth line, on a club that took 51.3 as a whole.
Fifteen playoff games for a goal and two assists.
The Finesse Game
77.4 mph is the 2nd-softest recorded shot of the 365 qualified forwards, behind Paul Stastny alone. Ten goals came off it, at 13.9 per cent on 72 shots, which is the 72nd percentile.
5.04 shots per 60 is the 12th percentile. He shoots five times an hour with one of the softest sticks in the league and scores at an above-average rate, and the explanation is location: 58 per cent from the slot at a median of 22 feet. He is not beating anyone; he is standing where the puck is.
Not one of his twenty-two points came on the power play, off 0:04 a night. 1.74 even-strength points per 60 is the 45th percentile — a genuinely respectable rate from a man who never sees the man advantage.
1.05 giveaways per 60 is the 20th percentile. He does not lose it.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 185, and 35 years old.
10.16 miles per 60 is the 35th-most of the 365 forwards the tracking covers — he covers more ground than nine-tenths of the league at eleven minutes a night — against a 22.0 mph top speed at the 22nd percentile and 4.1 bursts per 60 at the 37th. He is not fast and he never stops moving, which is the oldest description of a checking centre and here it is measured.
2.66 blocks per 60 is the 86th percentile among forwards.
0.28 penalties taken per 60 is the 8th percentile — eight minutes in seventy-five games at 35. On a roster whose top defenceman took fifty-four and whose top winger took sixty in forty-three games, that is worth naming.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, and he did not play an NHL game until he was 28. 420 NHL games at 35 with 171 points and a career plus-10.
Nobody drafted him and he has built a 420-game career out of being in the right place with the wrong shot, which is the least fashionable way to last in this league and one of the few that works.
With Connor McDavid he is not: the fourth line is where he plays and 51.5 per cent is what it produced. That is a fourth line doing its job on a conference finalist, and at 35 it is what the next season will be too.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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
0.11 penalty minutes a game over 75, 4th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He is not beating anyone; he is standing where the puck is.”
“He is not fast and he never stops moving, which is the oldest description of a checking centre and here it is measured.”
“Nobody drafted him and he has built a 420-game career out of being in the right place with the wrong shot”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 726 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.5%
- 66th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.9%
- 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: 33 for, 36 against. Expected: 27.1 and 25.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 55 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 51 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, 2021-22 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 42nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.79 a game
- Distance
- 1.94 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 77.4 mph
- 15th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 726 minutes at five-on-five
- Devin Shore25%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- EDM took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 726 minutes at five-on-five — 35th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warren Foegele | 49.5% | 54.4% | 51.9% |
| Evan Bouchard | 52.4% | 51.0% | 52.9% |
| Cody Ceci | 50.1% | 52.2% | 51.6% |
49.5% together, 54.4% for him apart and 51.9% for Foegele apart. He was better away from Foegele, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Foegele.
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
92 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.