This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Drew O'Connor
Pittsburgh Penguins Left Wing
Two hundred and nine minutes of five-on-five ice, and not one of the figures in it can be trusted.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | PIT | 10 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 8:57 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 22 | 3 | 2 | 5 | -1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 7.5 | 10:17 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 32 | 3 | 3 | 6 | -3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 6.3 | 9:52 |
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
22 games, 3 goals and 2 assists at 10:17 a night, minus-1, four penalty minutes, 40 shots. Undrafted, and thirty-two NHL games at ten minutes a night out of it.
Two hundred and nine minutes of five-on-five ice is less than half the five hundred this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, and it is small enough that the figures below are quoted only so that next season has something to be compared against.
The Finesse Game
66.1 per cent of the expected goals across 209 minutes. That is the highest figure attached to any name in this chapter and it means almost nothing — two hundred and nine minutes is about three games’ worth of a regular’s ice spread across a season, and a single shift can move it.
His ice went 8-9 against an expectation of 11.57-5.94. Three goals short in front and three more against than the model asked, which is the opposite of what a 66.1 per cent share would predict and is the clearest possible demonstration of why the sample is too small.
Forty shots produced three goals, from a 22-foot median with forty-four per cent inside twenty feet. He shoots from the right places and his shot is 85.1 mph, the 12th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers — the softest on this roster after Teddy Blueger.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 209 pounds, and twenty-two games at ten minutes a night produced four penalty minutes. There is nothing here to read.
The Intangibles
21.9 mph top speed and 1.8 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game, both drawn from twenty-two games — a maximum scales with the number of shifts a man takes and he took very few.
1.79 miles a game is the 6th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking measures, which at 10:17 a night is the shift length rather than the skater.
He is 24, undrafted, and has thirty-two NHL games. A 6-4 forward who goes to the net and cannot shoot hard is a recognisable type and the record does not yet say which version of it he is. What the club has is two hundred and nine minutes and a fourth-line opening behind two centres in their late thirties.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“Undrafted, and thirty-two NHL games at ten minutes a night out of it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 209 minutes
- Expected goals
- 66.1%
- 100th pct
- Shot attempts
- 59.4%
- 99th 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: 8 for, 9 against. Expected: 11.6 and 5.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 67 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 — 57 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 · 22 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 38th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.77 a game
- Distance
- 1.79 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.1 mph
- 40th 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 · 209 minutes at five-on-five
- Brian Boyleoff the roster50%
- Dominik Simonoff the roster41%
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
- PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 66.1% — 12.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 209 minutes at five-on-five — 1st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Boyle | 64.5% | 67.5% | 48.7% |
| Dominik Simon | 70.5% | 63.7% | 50.4% |
| John Marino | 62.6% | 67.9% | 51.1% |
64.5% together, 67.5% for him apart and 48.7% for Boyle apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Boyle behind.
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
54 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.