This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mathew Barzal

A 58.7 per cent chance share — the 99th percentile in the league — across the thirty games he was able to play.

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	NYI	58	14	37	51	+5	22	4	0	5	139	10.1	18:43
2023-24	NYI	80	23	57	80	-4	34	5	0	4	240	9.6	20:08
2024-25	NYI	30	6	14	20	+10	4	1	0	1	78	7.7	20:21
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	530	134	328	462	+10	252	24	0	21	1272	10.5	18:48

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

30 games, 6 goals and 14 assists for 20 points at 20:21 a night, on 78 shots at 7.69 per cent. 4 penalty minutes. Plus-10.

A 61.6 per cent chance share is the 99th percentile in the league and the highest figure in this edition. The on-ice goals were 24-11 against an expected 25.24-15.73, so his line outscored everybody while controlling play more completely than any other unit in the book, and the goaltending behind him stopped five more than the chances called for.

A 0.67-point-per-game rate across thirty games is the other half: the club’s most gifted forward played thirty-seven per cent of the season.

The Finesse Game

The best skater on the roster and one of the better ones in the league — he changes direction at full pace with the puck, which means a defenceman who steps up is beaten and one who backs off surrenders the zone.

The playmaking is elite and always has been: he delivers into space rather than onto a stick and holds the puck a beat longer than any killer’s discipline allows. 78 shots in 30 games at 7.69 per cent is the standing criticism — he passes up shots that a scorer takes, and 6 goals in 30 games is the consequence.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 186 and he is separated from the puck by any defenceman who gets a body on him. He does not go to the net front and he does not win a wall battle.

4 penalty minutes in 30 games. The durability is now the defining issue: this is the second time in three seasons that a substantial part of the year has been lost.

The Intangibles

A Calder Trophy at 21, an 85-point season, and eight years remaining on a contract that assumes he plays 82 games.

The 99th percentile is not a small thing — no forward in this edition tilted the ice further — and it was posted across thirty games in which his line was outscored anyway. Both facts belong on the page, and the question the club has to answer is which one repeats.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
61.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +13.5, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“he changes direction at full pace with the puck, which means a defenceman who steps up is beaten and one who backs off surrenders the zone.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The playmaking is elite and always has been: he delivers into space rather than onto a stick”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“6-1 and 186 and he is separated from the puck by any defenceman who gets a body on him.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He does not go to the net front”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“he does not win a wall battle.”
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“he changes direction at full pace with the puck, which means a defenceman who steps up is beaten and one who backs off surrenders the zone”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 487 minutes

Expected goals: 61.6%; 100th pct
Shot attempts: 58.3%; 97th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 11 against. Expected: 25.2 and 15.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

66th

Numbers

100th

The numbers rank him 34 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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 · 30 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 75th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.37 a game
Distance: 3.37 miles a game
Hardest shot: 81.5 mph; 26th pct

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 · 487 minutes at five-on-five

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: NYI took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 61.6% — 11.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: 487 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Anders Lee	62.2%	60.8%	49.7%
Bo Horvat	58.9%	64.2%	49.7%
Alexander Romanov	55.7%	65.1%	48.0%

62.2% together, 60.8% for him apart and 49.7% 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

114 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.