This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Marcus Pettersson
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
The lightest skater in this edition at 6-3 or taller, by seventeen pounds, and a plus-28 on a club that missed.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | ANA | 22 | 1 | 3 | 4 | +5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 6.3 | 13:37 |
| 2018-19 | ANA/PIT | 84 | 2 | 23 | 25 | +17 | 66 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 87 | 2.3 | 16:41 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 69 | 2 | 20 | 22 | +9 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 2.5 | 19:24 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 47 | 2 | 7 | 9 | +8 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 4.3 | 16:29 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 72 | 2 | 17 | 19 | +8 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 2.4 | 15:39 |
| 2022-23 | PIT | 68 | 1 | 23 | 24 | +4 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 96 | 1.0 | 20:35 |
| 2023-24 | PIT | 82 | 4 | 26 | 30 | +28 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 106 | 3.8 | 22:40 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 444 | 14 | 119 | 133 | +79 | 269 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 513 | 2.7 | 18:28 |
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, 4 goals and 26 assists for 30 points, none on the power play, 44 penalty minutes, 22:40 a night and plus-28, with 1 game-winner. He took 53.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,584 minutes — the seventh-most in this edition — and his ice went 87-67 against an expectation of 75.09-65.50.
Twelve goals of finishing above what the chances were worth, the best figure on the club by a distance. The plus-28 is exactly twice the next-best number in Pittsburgh, and thirty points is a career high by five.
The Finesse Game
172 attempts at a median of 55 feet with 80 per cent of them from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty, 103 of those on goal, converted at 3.9 per cent against a career 2.73 across 513 shots.
Fourteen goals in 444 career games. He does not shoot and has never pretended to; the value is 119 career assists and a first pass that gets the puck to the far blue line without a stop in between. Twenty-six assists from a man who scored four goals is a defenceman who has found exactly the job he is good at.
The Physical Game
He is 6-5 and 174 — the lightest skater in this edition at 6-3 or taller, by seventeen pounds — and took 44 penalty minutes.
269 career penalty minutes in 444 games. At that height and that weight he defends with stick and angle rather than with contact, and the reach does the work a heavier man would do with his shoulder. He is not going to move anybody out of the crease.
The Intangibles
Thirty-eighth overall in 2014 by Anaheim, seven seasons, two organisations, and 133 points in 444 games.
A career plus-79 on clubs that have not often been ahead. He played 82 games for one club for the first time last season and drew twenty-two minutes a night doing it.
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
- 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.
- 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
19:19 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
“At that height and that weight he defends with stick and angle rather than with contact, and the reach does the work a heavier man would do with his shoulder.”
“He is not going to move anybody out of the crease.”
“He does not shoot and has never pretended to; the value is 119 career assists and a first pass that gets the puck to the far blue line without a stop in between.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,584 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.4%
- 79th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.6%
- 76th 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: 87 for, 67 against. Expected: 75.1 and 65.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 40 points above where the report does. 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 — 67 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
- 20.9 mph
- 16th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.16 a game
- Distance
- 3.09 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.3 mph
- 37th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 · 1584 minutes at five-on-five
- Kris Letang37%
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 53.4% — 2.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,584 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Karlsson | 54.7% | 51.7% | 53.2% |
| Sidney Crosby | 57.3% | 50.3% | 50.9% |
| Kris Letang | 52.0% | 54.2% | 48.4% |
54.7% together, 51.7% for him apart and 53.2% for Karlsson apart. He was worse away from Karlsson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Karlsson 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
172 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 43 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.