This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

James van Riemsdyk

One thousand and eleven games, ninety-three career power-play goals, and sixty-five per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet.

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	BOS	71	11	27	38	+7	20	6	0	3	142	7.8	13:30
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1011	311	318	629	-66	394	93	3	46	2646	11.8	16:11

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

11 goals and 27 assists in 71 games for Boston — 38 points at 13:30 a night, plus-7, with 6 power-play goals and 3 game-winners on 142 shots at 7.75 per cent, and 20 penalty minutes.

53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 784 minutes, the 81st percentile — the best mark of any player on this roster. His ice went 30-21 against an expectation of 35.81-30.75 — six goals scored above expectation and five fewer conceded.

The Finesse Game

142 attempts at a median of 12 feet, with 65 per cent from inside 20 and 13 per cent from beyond 40 — the most net-front shot profile on any roster in this chapter — converting at 7.75 per cent against a career 11.75.

He stands in front of the goaltender and he tips pucks, and he has made a fifteen-year career out of it. 311 goals and 93 of them on the power play in 1,011 games.

27 assists. The hands below the goal line are better than the reputation and 318 career assists say so.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210. He goes to the front of the net and he takes the cross-check without moving, which is the whole physical dimension — he does not forecheck with force and he does not hit anybody.

20 penalty minutes in 71 games and 394 in 1,011 for his career is a low rate. He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.

The skating is the weakness and it has been for years.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2007 by Philadelphia, out of New Hampshire, and 1,011 games and 629 points at 35 across four clubs.

He signed here in the summer. A club that was 23rd on the power play has added a man with 93 career power-play goals who does nothing but stand in the paint, and next to Dmitri Voronkov that is two of them. It is the clearest single idea in this club’s off-season.

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
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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
72.7% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“**He stands in front of the goaltender and he tips pucks, and he has made a fifteen-year career out of it.** **311 goals and 93 of them on the power play** in 1,011 games.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“**He goes to the front of the net and he takes the cross-check without moving**, which is the whole physical dimension — he does not forecheck with force and he does not hit anybody.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“**He goes to the front of the net and he takes the cross-check without moving**, which is the whole physical dimension — he does not forecheck with force and he does not hit anybody.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**The hands below the goal line are better than the reputation** and 318 career assists say so.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 784 minutes

Expected goals: 53.8%; 81st pct
Shot attempts: 48.8%; 44th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 21 against. Expected: 35.8 and 30.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

47th

Numbers

81st

The numbers rank him 34 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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 · 71 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 30th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.41 a game
Distance: 1.96 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.4 mph; 54th pct

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 with BOS · 784 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: BOS took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 4.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 784 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Trent Frederic	55.9%	51.9%	46.5%
Morgan Geekie	58.0%	51.6%	47.9%
Charlie McAvoy	53.3%	54.0%	50.3%

55.9% together, 51.9% for him apart and 46.5% for Frederic apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

187 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 8 feet. 65% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.