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

Joe Veleno

Twelve goals on eighty-six shots at 24, a career minus-42 in 232 games, and a first-round pick's clock running out.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2020-21	DET	5	1	0	1	0	4	1	0	0	8	12.5	15:06
2021-22	DET	66	8	7	15	-14	22	0	0	0	73	11.0	13:13
2022-23	DET	81	9	11	20	-12	30	1	0	1	85	10.6	12:47
2023-24	DET	80	12	16	28	-16	25	3	0	1	86	14.0	13:57
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	232	30	34	64	-42	81	5	0	2	252	11.9	13:22

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

Eighty games, 12 goals and 16 assists with 3 on the power play, 13:57 a night and minus-16. He converted 13.95 per cent of 86 shots against a career 11.90 across 252.

He took 44.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 956 minutes, the 17th percentile, and his ice went 34-46 against an expectation of 32.60-41.19. A minus-16 on a club that scored 278 goals is a difficult number to explain away.

The Finesse Game

Eighty-six shots at a median of 22 feet with 47 per cent from inside 20. He gets to the slot and the 13.95 per cent conversion is above his level.

Sixteen assists in 80 games and 34 in 232 career games. There is no playmaking game, which for a centre taken 30th overall is the thing that has not arrived.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 201 and skates well for the size. Twenty-five penalty minutes in 80 games is a low rate and there is nothing hostile in it.

He does not forecheck hard and does not win the wall. On a club that took 45.7 per cent of the shot attempts, a fourth-line centre who does not retrieve is a real cost.

The Intangibles

The 30th pick in 2018 out of Montreal, granted exceptional status into junior at 15, and 232 games at 24 with 64 points and a career minus-42.

He is 24 and has been given four seasons. Twenty-eight points is the most he has managed and the club has spent this summer signing wingers.

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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck hard and does not win the wall.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Eighty-six shots at a median of 22 feet with 47 per cent from inside 20.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 956 minutes

Expected goals: 44.2%; 17th pct
Shot attempts: 45.7%; 20th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 34 for, 46 against. Expected: 32.6 and 41.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

8th

Numbers

17th

The two rank him within 9 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 — 57 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 23.2 mph; 92nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.82 a game
Distance: 2.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.5 mph; 48th 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 · 956 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: DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.2% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 956 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Shayne Gostisbehere	47.6%	42.2%	46.7%
Ben Chiarot	44.7%	43.9%	44.5%
Olli Määttä	47.7%	42.7%	51.0%

47.6% together, 42.2% for him apart and 46.7% for Gostisbehere apart. He was worse away from Gostisbehere, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Gostisbehere 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

129 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.