This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mathieu Olivier
Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing
Eighty-one penalty minutes in eleven and a half minutes a night, and a 95.7 mph shot he takes from the goal line.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 114 | 8 | 14 | 22 | -23 | 169 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 111 | 7.2 | 11:01 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
5 goals and 10 assists in 66 games, minus-20, 81 penalty minutes, 11:38 a night.
44.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 15th percentile, with his ice at 21-43 against an expectation of 26.99-34.34.
Four seasons, 114 games, 22 points — and 66 of those games came last season. He had played 48 in the three years before it.
The Finesse Game
75 shots at a median of 16 feet, 53 per cent from inside twenty — the closest-range distribution of any forward on this roster.
Inside forty: 60 shots, four goals, 6.67 per cent. Beyond forty: 14 shots, one.
Eight wrap-arounds in the shot-type record, which is a very high count and describes exactly where he works: below the goal line, on the puck, in traffic.
The shot measures 95.7 mph at the 82nd percentile, which is hard for a fourth-line winger and entirely beside the point given where he takes it from.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 232, and this is the report. 81 penalty minutes in 66 games at eleven and a half minutes a night is one of the highest rates in the league.
21.9 mph at the 33rd percentile and 1.82 miles a game at the 8th. He is slow and he does not cover ground; he is dressed to hit people and to fight, and he does both.
1.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 66th percentile is the one surprise here — for a man this heavy and this slow in a straight line, he gets moving more often than the top speed suggests.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Miami of Ohio, and born in Biloxi, Mississippi — which is close to unique in this book.
He spent three years as a call-up in Nashville and got a full season in Columbus at 26. The role he plays is the one the league keeps saying it has stopped dressing, and he took 81 minutes of penalties proving otherwise.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
28% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“Undrafted, out of Miami of Ohio, and born in Biloxi, Mississippi — which is close to unique in this book.”
“he is dressed to hit people and to fight, and he does both”
“below the goal line, on the puck, in traffic”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 724 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44%
- 15th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.6%
- 7th 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: 21 for, 43 against. Expected: 27.0 and 34.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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, 2022-23 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 42nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.26 a game
- Distance
- 1.82 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.7 mph
- 94th 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 724 minutes at five-on-five
- Sean Kuraly73%
- Liam Foudy25%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.0% — 0.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 724 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Kuraly | 44.9% | 41.8% | 37.1% |
| Eric Robinson | 44.7% | 42.6% | 36.9% |
| Erik Gudbranson | 40.4% | 46.7% | 40.7% |
44.9% together, 41.8% for him apart and 37.1% for Kuraly apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
106 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.