This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mathew Barzal
New York Islanders Center
The 22nd-softest deployment of 652 skaters and a below-average chance share out of it, with the 4th-most giveaways of 393 forwards.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | NYI | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 9:45 |
| 2017-18 | NYI | 82 | 22 | 63 | 85 | +1 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 170 | 12.9 | 17:46 |
| 2018-19 | NYI | 82 | 18 | 44 | 62 | -5 | 46 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 179 | 10.1 | 17:55 |
| 2019-20 | NYI | 68 | 19 | 41 | 60 | +5 | 44 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 171 | 11.1 | 20:03 |
| 2020-21 | NYI | 55 | 17 | 28 | 45 | +15 | 48 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 134 | 12.7 | 18:43 |
| 2021-22 | NYI | 73 | 15 | 44 | 59 | -15 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 161 | 9.3 | 18:01 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 362 | 91 | 220 | 311 | -1 | 192 | 14 | 0 | 11 | 815 | 11.2 | 18:23 |
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
73 games, 15 goals and 44 assists for 59 points at 18:01 a night, minus-15, eighteen penalty minutes, 161 shots. Sixteenth overall in 2015, six seasons, 362 games, 311 points.
Fifty-nine points is the lowest full-season total of his career. He scored 85 as a rookie and has not been back.
The Finesse Game
Forty-four assists against fifteen goals, and 220 assists against 91 goals across six seasons — he passes up the shot every time it is on offer.
2.09 even-strength points per 60 is the 68th percentile and thirty-four per cent of his points came on the power play, where he takes 2:40 a night.
7.34 shots per 60 is the 52nd percentile at 9.3 per cent, fifty-nine per cent from the slot at a 22-foot median. 85.3 mph is the 18th percentile for shot speed — there is not much of one, and the shot chart says he knows it.
3.74 giveaways per 60 is the 4th-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games, behind Evgeni Malkin, Ryan Getzlaf and Jack Hughes. Against 1.96 takeaways at the 72nd percentile, he has the puck constantly and loses it more than almost anybody.
48.2 per cent of the expected goals and 48.9 per cent of the attempts. Both are below average, and the deployment makes that worse rather than better: 63.2 per cent of his end-zone starts came in the attacking end, the 22nd-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
Twenty-one men in the league were handed softer minutes and he was outchanced anyway. His ice went 44-44 against an expectation of 47.97-51.57.
The Physical Game
1.64 hits per 60 is the 14th percentile and 0.78 blocks the 6th. There is nothing here and there is not supposed to be.
1.05 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.41 taken is the 94th-percentile net. Eighteen penalty minutes in seventy-three games.
The Intangibles
10.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 43rd-most of the 365 forwards the tracking covers and 10.04 miles per 60 the 61st-most. 22.8 mph is only the 73rd percentile — he sprints constantly and is not especially fast when he does.
He is 25 and the point totals have gone 85, 62, 60, 45, 59. The skating workload and the assist rate are genuine and the chance share out of the league’s twenty-second-softest chair is the problem. Nothing in this file says he is a first-line centre and the club uses him as 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.
- 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.
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:52 a game at five-on-five, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“10.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 43rd-most of the 365 forwards the tracking covers and 10.04 miles per 60 the 61st-most.”
“Forty-four assists against fifteen goals, and 220 assists against 91 goals across six seasons — he passes up the shot every time it is on offer.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,085 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.2%
- 40th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.9%
- 44th 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: 44 for, 44 against. Expected: 48.0 and 51.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 — 61 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 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 82nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 3.07 a game
- Distance
- 3.01 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.3 mph
- 41st 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 · 1072 minutes at five-on-five
- Anders Lee46%
- Zach Parise42%
- Josh Bailey30%
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
- NYI took 46.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.2% — 1.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,085 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anders Lee | 48.5% | 48.0% | 44.4% |
| Zach Parise | 47.1% | 49.0% | 51.9% |
| Noah Dobson | 47.2% | 48.9% | 46.2% |
48.5% together, 48.0% for him apart and 44.4% for Lee apart. Lee was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Lee 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
212 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.