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.

46.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 285 minutes, the 27th percentile. His ice went 10-14 against an expectation of 10.11-11.71.

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.

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.

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.

undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“**Undrafted**, out of Providence, and **260 NHL games and 50 points at 31** across four clubs.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“**He wins the draw that begins the shift and he is trusted a man short** — 5 career shorthanded goals in 260 games.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“**He wins the draw that begins the shift and he is trusted a man short** — 5 career shorthanded goals in 260 games.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“**2 penalty minutes in 33 games and 120 in 260 for his career.** He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“**2 penalty minutes in 33 games and 120 in 260 for his career.** He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He does not create and there is no offensive game here at all** — 50 points in 260 games is the entire record.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody and he competes on the wall without winning many.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 285 minutes

Expected goals: 46.3%; 28th pct
Shot attempts: 46.4%; 24th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 10 for, 14 against. Expected: 10.1 and 11.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

13th

Numbers

28th

The two rank him within 15 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 — 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 33 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 34th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.12 a game
Distance: 1.97 miles a game
Hardest shot: 78.3 mph; 16th 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 · 285 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: CGY took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.3% — 3.6 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	49.4%	43.6%	47.3%
Brayden Pachal	44.3%	47.3%	46.1%
Rasmus Andersson	51.4%	43.9%	48.4%

49.4% together, 43.6% for him apart and 47.3% for Duehr apart. He was worse away from Duehr, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Duehr 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

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.