This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Kris Letang

Nineteen seasons, 1,161 games and 52 penalty minutes at 37, on the second pair of a club that conceded 293 goals.

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	PIT	74	9	21	30	-15	52	4	1	0	164	5.5	23:32
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1161	175	597	772	+85	805	56	6	34	2946	5.9	24:12

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

9 goals and 21 assists in 74 games — 30 points at 23:32 a night, the largest assignment on the club, with 52 penalty minutes and a shorthanded goal. Minus-15.

46.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 26th percentile. His ice went 48-61 against an expectation of 49.74-56.94 — five goals better than expected for and level with the chances against, which on this roster counts as a good season.

The Finesse Game

164 attempts at a median of 46 feet with 61 per cent from beyond 40 and 13 per cent from inside 20 — he still joins the rush and he still shoots from inside the dots when the play takes him there.

The first pass under pressure is the skill that has lasted. 21 assists is modest and the club scored 243 goals; he remains the man who starts the breakout when the forecheck is heavy.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 199 and he plays a harder game than his size suggests and always has. He blocks shots, he goes into the corner, and he does not avoid anything.

52 penalty minutes in 74 games at 37 is a high rate and most of it is the answer to something — he has never let anything go, at any point in nineteen seasons.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2005 and 1,161 games, 772 points and three Stanley Cups, all of it in one uniform.

He has had two strokes and a heart condition diagnosed mid-career and played through a family bereavement in a playoff series. He is 38. Whatever this club is, its two defining defencemen played their entire careers here and one of them is still playing twenty-three minutes.

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
16.5% of his attempts in the slot, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass under pressure is the skill that has lasted.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots, he goes into the corner, and he does not avoid anything.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“**52 penalty minutes in 74 games at 37** is a high rate and most of it is the answer to something — he has never let anything go, at any point in nineteen seasons.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“He has had two strokes and a heart condition diagnosed mid-career and played through a family bereavement in a playoff series.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,353 minutes

Expected goals: 46.6%; 24th pct
Shot attempts: 49.5%; 47th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 61 against. Expected: 49.7 and 56.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

80th

Numbers

24th

The report ranks him 56 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 74 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 65th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.47 a game
Distance: 3.36 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.6 mph; 42nd 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

2024-25 · 1353 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, 2024-25

The club: PIT took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,353 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sidney Crosby	47.4%	46.0%	54.2%
Matt Grzelcyk	45.6%	47.3%	47.2%
Rickard Rakell	49.5%	44.8%	53.3%

47.4% together, 46.0% for him apart and 54.2% for Crosby apart. Crosby 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

230 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 61% from beyond forty.