Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

20

Fabian Zetterlund

San Jose Sharks Left Wing

Twenty-four goals and not one of them a game-winner, in 82 games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22NJD14358+50000368.313:21
2022-23NJD/SJS6761723-6141011185.113:15
2023-24SJS82242044-343361020411.818:51
2024-25 so far
Career163334275-35477113589.216:05

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

82 games, 24 goals and 20 assists for 44 points, 6 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 33 penalty minutes, 18:51 a night and minus-34, with no game-winners. He took 41.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,218 minutes, the 13th percentile, and his ice went 48-67 against an expectation of 44.98-62.71.

Three goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. Twenty-four goals with no game-winner in 82 games is a statistical oddity and a fair description of the club’s season.

The Finesse Game

306 attempts at a median of 32 feet with 30 per cent of them from inside twenty and 31 per cent from beyond forty, 198 of those on goal, converted at 11.8 per cent against a career 9.22 across 358 shots.

Thirty-three career goals in 163 games, 24 of them last season. He shoots from everywhere and from any angle, which on a club that generated the fewest chances in hockey is what a winger has to do; six power-play goals out of seven in his career came last season.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 208 and took 33 penalty minutes.

Forty-seven career penalty minutes in 163 games. He is thick and low for a winger and wins pucks on the wall by leaning rather than by hitting, which is most of how a third-round pick turned into a twenty-four-goal scorer.

The Intangibles

Sixty-third overall in 2017 by New Jersey, three seasons, two organisations, and 75 points in 163 games.

A career minus-35 in 163 games, most of it earned last season. He is 25 and scored 24 goals for the worst club in hockey, which is either a breakout or a mirage, and the next eighty-two games will settle it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,218 minutes

Expected goals
41.8%
8th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43%
8th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 67 against. Expected: 45.0 and 62.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
67th
Numbers
8th

The report ranks him 59 points above where the numbers do. 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 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1218 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, 2023-24

The club
SJS took 40.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.8% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,218 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mikael Granlund42.0%41.3%38.4%
Mario Ferraro43.3%40.9%43.3%
Anthony Duclair44.6%40.3%44.8%

42.0% together, 41.3% for him apart and 38.4% for Granlund apart. Granlund was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Granlund 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

306 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.