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

Kevin Rooney

Undrafted, two hundred and sixty games, and two penalty minutes in thirty-three of them.

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

2016-17	NJD	4	0	0	0	-3	4	0	0	0	2	0.0	10:11
2017-18	NJD	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	11:46
2018-19	NJD	41	6	4	10	-4	15	0	1	1	39	15.4	12:37
2019-20	NJD	49	4	5	9	+8	20	0	2	0	59	6.8	11:44
2020-21	NYR	54	8	6	14	0	54	0	2	0	62	12.9	12:21
2021-22	NYR	61	6	6	12	-1	18	0	0	1	71	8.5	13:51
2022-23	CGY	17	0	1	1	-2	7	0	0	0	14	0.0	8:52
2023-24	CGY	33	3	1	4	-4	2	0	0	0	27	11.1	11:13
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	260	27	23	50	-6	120	0	5	2	277	9.8	12:13

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

3 goals and 1 assist in 33 games — 4 points at 11:13 a night, minus-4, on 27 shots at 11.11 per cent, and 2 penalty minutes.

Two penalty minutes in thirty-three games is one of the cleanest rates in this edition.

47.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 285 minutes, the 31st percentile. His ice went 8-12 against an expectation of 10.09-11.25.

The Finesse Game

27 attempts at a median of 23 feet, with 47 per cent from inside 20 and 16 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 11.11 per cent. Twenty-seven goals in 260 NHL games.

One assist in thirty-three games. He does not create and there is no offensive game here at all — 50 points in 260 games is the entire record.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 190. He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody and he competes on the wall without winning many.

2 penalty minutes in 33 games and 120 in 260 for his career. He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties. He wins the draw that begins the shift and he is trusted a man short — 5 career shorthanded goals in 260 games.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Providence, and 260 NHL games and 50 points at 31 across four clubs.

An undrafted fourth-line centre who kills penalties, wins draws and takes two penalty minutes in thirty-three games is exactly the player a club with the 19th penalty kill should keep, and he is the thirteenth forward on the roster.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 285 minutes

Expected goals: 47.3%; 32nd pct
Shot attempts: 46.2%; 22nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 8 for, 12 against. Expected: 10.1 and 11.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

30th

Numbers

32nd

The two rank him within 2 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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

2023-24 · 285 minutes at five-on-five

Walker Duehr45%
Anthony-John (AJ) Greernow FLA30%
Dryden Hunt27%

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: CGY took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 2.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: 285 minutes at five-on-five — 5th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Walker Duehr	46.6%	47.9%	42.6%
Brayden Pachal	44.8%	48.5%	47.7%
Rasmus Andersson	51.5%	45.2%	48.3%

46.6% together, 47.9% for him apart and 42.6% for Duehr apart. Duehr was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Duehr 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

32 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 6 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.