Kaiden Guhle

A physical, mobile defenceman with everything required except the ability to stay in the lineup.

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

2022-23	MTL	44	4	14	18	-19	27	0	0	0	48	8.3	20:31
2023-24	MTL	70	6	16	22	-8	56	0	0	1	95	6.3	20:51
2024-25	MTL	55	6	12	18	+6	47	0	0	1	71	8.5	21:11
2025-26	MTL	39	2	9	11	+5	41	0	0	2	40	5.0	19:28
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	208	18	51	69	-16	171	0	0	4	254	7.1	20:36

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

2 goals and 11 points in 39 games, plus-5, on 19 and a half minutes a night. He missed more than half the season, which is now the pattern rather than the exception.

The Finesse Game

Modest offensively and entirely comfortable with it. He makes a clean first pass, does not force plays through the middle, and joins the rush rarely enough that he is almost never caught. 18 goals in 208 career games is the honest rate.

The skating is the tool that makes the rest work — he closes gaps quickly and can turn and retrieve under a hard forecheck, which is what lets him play against top lines.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 202, and this is where the value sits. He finishes checks, clears the crease, and is genuinely hard to play against along the wall — the thing this defence otherwise lacks almost entirely.

He also plays with an edge that has cost him a few penalties and, more importantly, contributed to a run of injuries. The style is not gentle on the body.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick who looked, in his first 2 seasons, like a future top-pairing defenceman on a team that needed one. The talent has not gone anywhere; the availability has.

He is 24. 2 more seasons like this one and the conversation about him changes from what he could be to what the club can rely on.

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

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
39% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 6th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 669 minutes

Expected goals: 48.1%; 38th pct
Shot attempts: 45.6%; 16th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 23 against. Expected: 26.4 and 28.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

82nd

Numbers

38th

The report ranks him 44 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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, 2025-26 · 39 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 78th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.72 a game
Distance: 2.68 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.6 mph; 35th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 17 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 669 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, 2025-26

The club: MTL took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.1% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: 669 minutes at five-on-five — 28th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nick Suzuki	46.4%	48.8%	55.2%
Cole Caufield	44.0%	49.7%	55.8%
Mike Matheson	33.9%	53.8%	48.5%

46.4% together, 48.8% for him apart and 55.2% for Suzuki apart. Suzuki 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

72 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 62 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.