This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Liam O'Brien
Arizona Coyotes Center
Two hundred and eighty-eight penalty minutes in a hundred and twenty-four games, and nine years in the minors to get them.
| 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 | ARI | 56 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -5 | 114 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 7.7 | 11:26 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 124 | 6 | 13 | 19 | +1 | 288 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 98 | 6.1 | 9:47 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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 8 assists in 56 games — 11 points at 11:26 a night, minus-5, on 39 shots and 114 penalty minutes.
39 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 592 minutes, the 3rd percentile, on the club’s hardest starts — 37.6 per cent in the attacking end, the 4th percentile. His ice went 16-23 against an expectation of 14.72-23.01, which is exactly what the chances predicted.
It was the first season of his career with more than 30 NHL games.
The Finesse Game
39 attempts at a median of 32 feet, off a shot measured at 81.3 mph, the 4th percentile. Six goals in 124 career games.
There is no finesse game and nobody has ever pretended otherwise. He gets the puck in deep and he goes to get it back.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 215, and 288 penalty minutes in 124 games is one of the highest rates in the league. He fights, he answers for teammates, and on a young roster in a five-thousand-seat building he is the reason the other side thinks twice.
1.82 miles a game at the 8th percentile — the shifts are short and they are spent in a small area, which is what the role is.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, and he was twenty-eight before he played fifty NHL games in a season. Nine years in the American League for a job most players would have quit chasing.
He is 29. The enforcer’s role has mostly been legislated out of the game and he is one of the last men employed to do it — which makes him both a genuine folk favourite here and a player whose usefulness depends entirely on a coach who wants one.
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.
“Undrafted, and he was twenty-eight before he played fifty NHL games in a season.”
“He fights, he answers for teammates, and on a young roster in a five-thousand-seat building he is the reason the other side thinks twice.”
“He fights, he answers for teammates, and on a young roster in a five-thousand-seat building he is the reason the other side thinks twice.”
“288 penalty minutes in 124 games is one of the highest rates in the league”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 592 minutes
- Expected goals
- 39%
- 3rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 39.3%
- 1st 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: 16 for, 23 against. Expected: 14.7 and 23.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 20 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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
2022-23 · 592 minutes at five-on-five
- Christian Fischernow DET59%
- Jack McBain43%
- Travis Boyd23%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.0% — 6.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 592 minutes at five-on-five — 22nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christian Fischer | 41.2% | 35.8% | 43.8% |
| Jack McBain | 38.9% | 39.1% | 42.4% |
| Patrik Nemeth | 37.5% | 39.7% | 41.3% |
41.2% together, 35.8% for him apart and 43.8% for Fischer apart. He was worse away from Fischer, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Fischer 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
53 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 23% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 32% from beyond forty.