James van Riemsdyk

16 goals at 36 on an 18.8 per cent rate, and a net-front specialist signed for a power play that is already 2nd.

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	CBJ	71	16	20	36	-4	23	1	0	2	85	18.8	12:24
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1082	327	338	665	-70	417	94	3	48	2731	12.0	15:56

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

16 goals and 20 assists in 71 games for 36 points, minus-4, on 12:24 a night with Columbus.

18.8 per cent shooting on 85 shots, which is a very high rate on a small volume and will not repeat. 36 points in twelve minutes a night at 36 is nonetheless a real return.

The Finesse Game

Everything happens within fifteen feet of the goaltender. He deflects, he collects rebounds, and he has hands in tight that are still among the better ones in the league for that specific job.

85 shots in 71 games is very low volume — the offence is entirely a matter of being in the right place when somebody else shoots. 20 assists is a fair total for a man who spends the shift with his back to the play.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210, and he uses the size to hold a position rather than to win anything. He takes cross-checks in front of the net and stays, and does not forecheck or win pucks on the wall.

23 penalty minutes over 71 games. The skating went years ago and it is the reason he has been a bottom-six forward for five seasons.

The Intangibles

A 2nd overall pick, seventeen seasons, six organisations, and a late career built entirely on one skill that has not deserted him.

Detroit’s power play was 2nd in the league and lacked a man in the paint. This is a precise and cheap answer to that, and at 36 nothing else should be expected.

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
68.9% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
3 of his 16 goals late or in overtime, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Everything happens within fifteen feet of the goaltender. He deflects, he collects rebounds, and he has hands in tight that are still among the better ones in the league for that specific job.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He takes cross-checks in front of the net and stays, and does not forecheck or win pucks on the wall.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“does not forecheck or win pucks on the wall”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not forecheck or win pucks on the wall”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 766 minutes

Expected goals: 47.5%; 31st pct
Shot attempts: 48.6%; 39th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 43 against. Expected: 29.9 and 33.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

36th

Numbers

31st

The two rank him within 5 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2024-25 · 71 games

Top speed: 21.7 mph; 27th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.55 a game
Distance: 1.86 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.8 mph; 65th 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

2024-25 with CBJ · 766 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, 2024-25

The club: CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.5% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 766 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Kent Johnson	46.1%	48.6%	50.1%
Zach Werenski	54.0%	43.3%	53.4%
Ivan Provorov	45.2%	48.6%	47.1%

46.1% together, 48.6% for him apart and 50.1% for Johnson apart. Johnson was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

122 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 61% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.