This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Drew O'Connor
Pittsburgh Penguins Left Wing
Undrafted, 6-4, and 52 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet — the closest chart of any Pittsburgh forward who shot two hundred times.
| 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 | PIT | 46 | 5 | 6 | 11 | -3 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 8.1 | 9:49 |
| 2023-24 | PIT | 79 | 16 | 17 | 33 | +14 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 160 | 10.0 | 15:45 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 157 | 24 | 26 | 50 | +8 | 38 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 270 | 8.9 | 12:49 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
79 games, 16 goals and 17 assists for 33 points, none on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 20 penalty minutes, 15:45 a night and plus-14, with 2 game-winners. He took 50.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,087 minutes, the 56th percentile, and his ice went 49-42 against an expectation of 49.99-49.27.
His ice finished level with the chances at one end and seven goals to the good at the other. Sixteen goals is two-thirds of his career total in one season, and 1,087 minutes is the most five-on-five ice of any Pittsburgh forward under 27.
The Finesse Game
211 attempts at a median of 19 feet with 52 per cent of them from inside twenty, 153 of those on goal, converted at 10.0 per cent against a career 8.89 across 270 shots.
Zero power-play goals in 157 career games. Everything he scores comes from within twenty feet at even strength, which is the closest shot chart of any Pittsburgh forward who took two hundred attempts and the reason a fourth-line wage draws third-line minutes.
The Physical Game
He is 6-4 and 209 and took 20 penalty minutes.
Thirty-eight career penalty minutes in 157 games. He is a large man who forechecks by arriving first rather than by finishing checks, and there is more speed in his game than there is weight behind it.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, four seasons, all of them in Pittsburgh, and 50 points in 157 games.
He was undrafted, took three seasons to hold a place, and then scored 16 goals in the fourth. One career shorthanded goal and a plus-8 is a bottom-six winger doing more than his contract asked for.
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
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
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“Everything he scores comes from within twenty feet at even strength, which is the closest shot chart of any Pittsburgh forward who took two hundred attempts and the reason a fourth-line wage draws third-line minutes.”
“He is a large man who forechecks by arriving first rather than by finishing checks, and there is more speed in his game than there is weight behind it.”
“He was undrafted, took three seasons to hold a place, and then scored 16 goals in the fourth.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,087 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.4%
- 56th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.3%
- 66th 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: 49 for, 42 against. Expected: 50.0 and 49.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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, 2023-24 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 80th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 3.27 a game
- Distance
- 2.58 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.8 mph
- 69th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 1087 minutes at five-on-five
- Lars Eller28%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.4% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,087 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Karlsson | 52.8% | 48.4% | 54.5% |
| Kris Letang | 45.4% | 53.2% | 51.1% |
| Marcus Pettersson | 51.9% | 49.5% | 53.9% |
52.8% together, 48.4% for him apart and 54.5% for Karlsson apart. He was worse away from Karlsson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Karlsson did.
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
211 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.