This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Liam O'Brien
Arizona Coyotes Center
One hundred and six penalty minutes in 39 games, and a 35.7 per cent chance share — the lowest figure on the roster.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | WSH | 13 | 1 | 1 | 2 | +4 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 6.3 | 7:33 |
| 2016-17 | WSH | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 6:08 |
| 2017-18 | WSH | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 6:55 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 12 | 0 | 3 | 3 | +1 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0.0 | 6:34 |
| 2021-22 | ARI | 39 | 2 | 1 | 3 | +1 | 106 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 5.6 | 9:29 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 68 | 3 | 5 | 8 | +6 | 174 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 59 | 5.1 | 8:26 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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 1 assist in 39 games — 3 points at 9:29 a night, plus-1, on 36 shots and 106 penalty minutes.
One hundred and six penalty minutes in 39 games, and 174 in 68 across a career. That is the role and there is no pretending otherwise.
35.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 364 minutes — the lowest figure on this roster and one of the lowest anywhere. His ice went 7-6 against an expectation of 9.43-16.99, which is eleven fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted across 364 minutes and is not a thing anybody should read as evidence of defending.
1.15 goals for per 60 of his ice time. Only Christian Fischer, on nearly twice the minutes, was lower.
The Finesse Game
36 attempts, 2 goals, and 8 points in 68 NHL games. There is nothing here and the club has never asked for anything.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 215, and everything he is worth is in this section. He fights, he finishes checks, and he is the man sent over the boards when a game has turned unpleasant.
1.52 miles a game is the 1st percentile among the skaters this book tracks, on 9:29 a night — a fourth-line enforcer’s shift chart, and the figure describes his usage as much as it does him.
The Intangibles
Undrafted out of Halifax, signed by Washington at twenty, and eight professional seasons for 68 NHL games.
He is 28. A club that finished 31st and is about to play a season in a college rink has room on its fourth line for a man who will do this job for the minimum, and there is nothing cynical about that — somebody has to be the thirteenth forward, and he has earned the seat the hard way.
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
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.
“He fights, he finishes checks, and he is the man sent over the boards when a game has turned unpleasant.”
“Undrafted out of Halifax, signed by Washington at twenty, and eight professional seasons for 68 NHL games”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 364 minutes
- Expected goals
- 35.7%
- 0th pct
- Shot attempts
- 40.4%
- 2nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 7 for, 6 against. Expected: 9.4 and 17.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 9 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 50 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, 2021-22 · 39 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 21st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.56 a game
- Distance
- 1.52 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.1 mph
- 40th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 364 minutes at five-on-five
- Loui Erikssonoff the roster20%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- ARI took 42.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 35.7% — 7.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 364 minutes at five-on-five — 11th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anton Stralman | 36.4% | 35.2% | 43.9% |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 49.4% | 29.9% | 42.1% |
| Alex Galchenyuk | 42.0% | 32.5% | 37.3% |
36.4% together, 35.2% for him apart and 43.9% for Stralman apart. Stralman 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
50 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.