This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mason Appleton
Detroit Red Wings Center
22 points and a plus-7 on a good club, and a fourth-line winger signed to kill penalties on a bad one.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | WPG | 36 | 3 | 7 | 10 | +9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 29 | 10.3 | 8:12 |
| 2019-20 | WPG | 46 | 5 | 3 | 8 | -9 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 55 | 9.1 | 11:10 |
| 2020-21 | WPG | 56 | 12 | 13 | 25 | +11 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 13.6 | 14:25 |
| 2021-22 | SEA/WPG | 68 | 8 | 13 | 21 | -1 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 98 | 8.2 | 14:53 |
| 2022-23 | WPG | 41 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +2 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 7.0 | 16:01 |
| 2023-24 | WPG | 82 | 14 | 22 | 36 | +16 | 26 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 122 | 11.5 | 16:03 |
| 2024-25 | WPG | 71 | 10 | 12 | 22 | +7 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 107 | 9.3 | 14:50 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 400 | 57 | 81 | 138 | +35 | 124 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 570 | 10.0 | 14:08 |
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
10 goals and 12 assists in 71 games for 22 points, plus-7, on 14:50 a night with Winnipeg.
107 shots and 10 goals at 9.3 per cent, in a bottom-six role on the best regular-season club in the league. A perfectly typical season for what he is.
The Finesse Game
Modest. The hands are functional and the shot is not a weapon, and 22 points is his fifth consecutive season in roughly that range.
He protects the puck adequately on the wall and makes the simple play. Nothing here suggests more.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 196, and honest rather than heavy. He forechecks, blocks shots, and is trusted defensively in every situation.
22 penalty minutes over 71 games. The durability has been reasonable.
The Intangibles
A sixth-round pick, two organisations, and a decade of being a reliable bottom-six forward on good teams.
Detroit finished 28th on the penalty kill and signed a genuinely good penalty killer. That is a sensible transaction and it is worth about two goals a season.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
36.4% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
30% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He protects the puck adequately on the wall and makes the simple play.”
“He forechecks, blocks shots, and is trusted defensively in every situation.”
“He forechecks, blocks shots, and is trusted defensively in every situation.”
“He forechecks, blocks shots, and is trusted defensively in every situation.”
“Detroit finished 28th on the penalty kill and signed a genuinely good penalty killer.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 930 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.3%
- 29th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.5%
- 47th 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: 32 for, 27 against. Expected: 33.3 and 37.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 26 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 — 73 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.45 a game
- Distance
- 2.33 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.9 mph
- 71st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 with WPG · 930 minutes at five-on-five
- Adam Lowry73%
- Rasmus Kuparioff the roster11%
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
- WPG took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 4.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 930 minutes at five-on-five — 50th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nino Niederreiter | 47.7% | 46.1% | 48.5% |
| Adam Lowry | 50.0% | 40.0% | 55.1% |
| Dylan DeMelo | 48.9% | 46.3% | 54.7% |
47.7% together, 46.1% for him apart and 48.5% for Niederreiter apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
140 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 36% from beyond forty.