Photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Mathieu Olivier

101 penalty minutes, 15 goals, and the 86th percentile.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2019-20	NSH	8	0	1	1	+1	4	0	0	0	6	0.0	7:33
2020-21	NSH	30	3	2	5	-1	70	1	0	0	25	12.0	10:55
2021-22	NSH	10	0	1	1	-3	14	0	0	0	5	0.0	10:06
2022-23	CBJ	66	5	10	15	-20	81	0	0	1	75	6.7	11:38
2023-24	CBJ	54	5	7	12	-4	70	0	1	1	55	9.1	11:17
2024-25	CBJ	82	18	14	32	-4	139	0	1	5	111	16.2	14:28
2025-26	CBJ	61	15	11	26	+13	101	0	0	3	93	16.1	14:14
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	311	46	46	92	-18	479	1	2	10	370	12.4	12:36

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

15 goals and 11 assists in 61 games — 26 points, plus-13, at 14:14 a night with 101 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

More than the role requires. 146 unblocked attempts with 47 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 22, and 15 goals — a genuine third-line scoring rate from a man whose job description is fighting.

11 assists in 61 games is the ceiling and nobody is asking for more.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 232 pounds, undrafted, and one of the two or three most willing fighters left in the league. 101 penalty minutes in 61 games.

He is also fast enough to forecheck a defenceman into a turnover, which is the difference between a job and a liability.

The Intangibles

53.9 per cent of the expected goals, 82nd percentile, with the goals 39-25 in his favour across 799 minutes. That is the second-best forward mark on the club, from the fourth line, from the enforcer.

This is the clearest single data point for the argument this book keeps making. The 1991 edition’s equivalent took 250 minutes, scored twice, and could not be on the ice when it mattered. Olivier takes 100, scores 15, and drives play at an 86th-percentile rate.

He is 29 and has 311 NHL games. 4 goals in his last 10. Under a salary cap, this is the only version of the job that survives.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 799 minutes

Expected goals: 53.9%; 82nd pct
Shot attempts: 51%; 67th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 25 against. Expected: 34.7 and 29.8.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

44th

Numbers

82nd

Blind

44th

The numbers rank him 38 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 38 points from the numbers; this one lands 38. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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, 2025-26 · 61 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 30th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.89 a game
Distance: 2.23 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 80th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 1 assists, 22 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 799 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, 2025-26

The club: CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.9% — 2.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 799 minutes at five-on-five — 38th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Charlie Coyle	53.2%	56.1%	49.8%
Cole Sillinger	53.1%	55.2%	51.4%
Zach Werenski	59.7%	49.7%	53.9%

53.2% together, 56.1% for him apart and 49.8% for Coyle apart. Coyle was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Coyle 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

146 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.