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

Kris Letang

Eighty-two games at 24:41 in his eighteenth season, and not one power-play goal in any of them.

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

2006-07	PIT	7	2	0	2	-3	4	2	0	0	8	25.0	11:33
2007-08	PIT	63	6	11	17	-1	23	1	0	3	68	8.8	18:10
2008-09	PIT	74	10	23	33	-7	24	4	1	3	138	7.2	21:09
2009-10	PIT	73	3	24	27	+1	51	0	0	0	174	1.7	21:34
2010-11	PIT	82	8	42	50	+15	101	4	0	2	236	3.4	24:02
2011-12	PIT	51	10	32	42	+21	34	4	1	3	142	7.0	24:50
2012-13	PIT	35	5	33	38	+16	8	1	0	1	95	5.3	25:38
2013-14	PIT	37	11	11	22	-8	16	6	0	1	108	10.2	24:14
2014-15	PIT	69	11	43	54	+12	79	2	1	1	197	5.6	25:29
2015-16	PIT	71	16	51	67	+9	66	5	0	2	218	7.3	26:57
2016-17	PIT	41	5	29	34	+2	32	2	0	2	122	4.1	25:31
2017-18	PIT	79	9	42	51	-9	56	4	0	1	222	4.0	25:20
2018-19	PIT	65	16	40	56	+13	48	2	1	3	206	7.8	25:58
2019-20	PIT	61	15	29	44	0	38	6	0	2	177	8.5	25:44
2020-21	PIT	55	7	38	45	+19	32	1	0	2	132	5.3	24:39
2021-22	PIT	78	10	58	68	+20	49	2	0	3	214	4.7	25:47
2022-23	PIT	64	12	29	41	-13	30	6	1	3	161	7.4	24:51
2023-24	PIT	82	10	41	51	+13	62	0	0	2	164	6.1	24:41
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1087	166	576	742	+100	753	52	5	34	2782	6.0	24:15

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

82 games, 10 goals and 41 assists for 51 points, none on the power play, 62 penalty minutes, 24:41 a night and plus-13, with 2 game-winners. He took 49.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,590 minutes — the sixth-most in this edition — and his ice went 78-71 against an expectation of 71.94-72.91.

Six goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and two more stopped than the shots called for. The 49.7 per cent is the only figure below half among the club’s three big-minute defencemen, and 24:41 is the most ice of anybody in Pittsburgh.

The Finesse Game

234 attempts at a median of 51 feet with 74 per cent of them from beyond forty and 8 per cent from inside twenty, 161 of those on goal, converted at 6.1 per cent against a career 5.97 across 2,782 shots.

576 career assists, third among defencemen in this edition behind Erik Karlsson and Brent Burns. He carries the puck out rather than passing it out, and at 37 he still takes the first stride away from a forechecker faster than most defencemen take their third. Zero power-play goals in 82 games, against 52 in his career, is the strangest line on this roster.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 199 and took 62 penalty minutes.

753 career penalty minutes in 1,087 games is a high total for a defenceman his size, and much of it is retaliation rather than the initial infraction — he answers cross-checks in front of his own net and gets caught doing it.

The Intangibles

Sixty-second overall in 2005, eighteen seasons, all of them in Pittsburgh, and 742 points in 1,087 games.

A career plus-100 and 1,087 games in one uniform. He is 37 and still taking more ice than anybody else on the club, which is the whole of the case for him and the whole of the worry about him.

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

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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:23 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He carries the puck out rather than passing it out, and at 37 he still takes the first stride away from a forechecker faster than most defencemen take their third.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“753 career penalty minutes in 1,087 games is a high total for a defenceman his size, and much of it is retaliation rather than the initial infraction — he answers cross-checks in front of his own net and gets caught doing it.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“A career plus-100 and 1,087 games in one uniform.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,590 minutes

Expected goals: 49.7%; 50th pct
Shot attempts: 50.9%; 62nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 78 for, 71 against. Expected: 71.9 and 72.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

93rd

Numbers

50th

The report ranks him 43 points above where the numbers do. 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. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 80 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 78th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.55 a game
Distance: 3.56 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.5 mph; 79th 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 · 1590 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: PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.7% — 1.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,590 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sidney Crosby	54.1%	45.9%	53.8%
Marcus Pettersson	52.0%	48.4%	54.2%
Bryan Rust	51.7%	48.7%	54.7%

54.1% together, 45.9% for him apart and 53.8% for Crosby apart. He was worse away from Crosby, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Crosby 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

234 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.