This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mathew Barzal
New York Islanders Center
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 58.7 per cent chance share is the 99th percentile in the league and the highest figure in this edition. The on-ice goals were 15-18 against an expected 23.95-16.82, so his line was outscored while controlling play more completely than any other unit in the book. Nine goals that should have been scored were not.
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.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 487 minutes
- Expected goals
- 58.7%
- 99th pct
- Shot attempts
- 57.3%
- 95th 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: 15 for, 18 against. Expected: 23.9 and 16.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 35 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 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 487 minutes at five-on-five
- Anders Lee57%
- Bo Horvat50%
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 58.7% — 8.8 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 | 57.8% | 60.1% | 49.2% |
| Bo Horvat | 57.0% | 60.5% | 48.6% |
| Alexander Romanov | 54.4% | 61.3% | 48.8% |
57.8% together, 60.1% for him apart and 49.2% 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.