This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
James van Riemsdyk
Boston Bruins Left Wing
Fifty-nine per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet, at thirty-four, after fourteen years of standing in the same place.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-10 | PHI | 78 | 15 | 20 | 35 | -1 | 30 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 173 | 8.7 | 12:58 |
| 2010-11 | PHI | 75 | 21 | 19 | 40 | +15 | 35 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 173 | 12.1 | 14:32 |
| 2011-12 | PHI | 43 | 11 | 13 | 24 | -1 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 121 | 9.1 | 15:10 |
| 2012-13 | TOR | 48 | 18 | 14 | 32 | -7 | 26 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 140 | 12.9 | 19:12 |
| 2013-14 | TOR | 80 | 30 | 31 | 61 | -9 | 50 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 279 | 10.8 | 21:03 |
| 2014-15 | TOR | 82 | 27 | 29 | 56 | -33 | 43 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 248 | 10.9 | 19:05 |
| 2015-16 | TOR | 40 | 14 | 15 | 29 | +3 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 129 | 10.8 | 17:46 |
| 2016-17 | TOR | 82 | 29 | 33 | 62 | -2 | 37 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 238 | 12.2 | 15:53 |
| 2017-18 | TOR | 81 | 36 | 18 | 54 | +1 | 30 | 11 | 0 | 5 | 248 | 14.5 | 14:54 |
| 2018-19 | PHI | 66 | 27 | 21 | 48 | -10 | 18 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 167 | 16.2 | 16:36 |
| 2019-20 | PHI | 66 | 19 | 21 | 40 | +5 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 151 | 12.6 | 14:54 |
| 2020-21 | PHI | 56 | 17 | 26 | 43 | +2 | 14 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 132 | 12.9 | 16:33 |
| 2021-22 | PHI | 82 | 24 | 14 | 38 | -33 | 25 | 9 | 0 | 4 | 186 | 12.9 | 16:07 |
| 2022-23 | PHI | 61 | 12 | 17 | 29 | -3 | 28 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 119 | 10.1 | 15:21 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 940 | 300 | 291 | 591 | -73 | 374 | 87 | 3 | 43 | 2504 | 12.0 | 16:23 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
12 goals and 17 assists in 61 games for Philadelphia — 29 points at 15:21 a night, minus-3, with 2 power-play goals on 119 shots and 28 penalty minutes.
52.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 783 minutes, the 72nd percentile, on a club that finished well outside the playoffs — which makes it a better number than it looks. His ice went 34-31 against an expectation of 33.71-30.25, so the result matched the chances almost exactly.
He broke a finger and missed a month.
The Finesse Game
119 attempts at a median of 15 feet, with 59 per cent from inside 20 — the closest shot chart in this book so far and the tightest of any forward on this roster.
He has scored 300 NHL goals from a radius of about twelve feet. The hands in tight are genuinely excellent: he tips, he redirects, and he handles a puck at his skates in traffic better than almost anybody in the league. He does not shoot from distance because there is no reason to.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 210, and he occupies the front of the net without being a punishing player — 374 penalty minutes in 940 games.
The skating is the reason he is available on a cheap contract at 34: 21.6 mph is the 17th percentile and 0.7 bursts over twenty a game is the 40th. He was never fast and he is slower now. On a fourth line playing eleven minutes that does not matter; on a second line playing seventeen it does.
The Intangibles
Second overall in 2007, fourteen seasons, 940 games, 591 points and 300 goals — a long, productive, entirely unspectacular career from the second pick of the 2007 draft.
He is 34. Boston signed a net-front specialist for one year because it lost two centres and needed somebody who scores where its remaining centres pass — and if Pastrnak’s power play is going to survive Bergeron’s retirement, the man in the blue paint has to be this one.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“He has scored 300 NHL goals from a radius of about twelve feet.”
“he occupies the front of the net without being a punishing player — 374 penalty minutes in 940 games”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 783 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.7%
- 72nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.7%
- 59th 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: 34 for, 31 against. Expected: 33.7 and 30.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 31 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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
2022-23 with PHI · 783 minutes at five-on-five
- Morgan Frost51%
- Owen Tippett39%
- Kevin Hayesnow STL22%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- PHI took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.7% — 5.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 783 minutes at five-on-five — 38th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morgan Frost | 50.3% | 55.1% | 46.7% |
| Owen Tippett | 52.1% | 53.1% | 48.3% |
| Ivan Provorov | 48.8% | 54.7% | 45.2% |
50.3% together, 55.1% for him apart and 46.7% for Frost apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Frost 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
159 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 59% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.