This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mathieu Olivier
Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing
18 goals and 139 penalty minutes, and 56 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 250 | 31 | 35 | 66 | -31 | 378 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 277 | 11.2 | 12:13 |
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
18 goals and 14 assists in 82 games for 32 points, minus-4, on 14:28 a night, with 139 penalty minutes — the most on the club by 84.
46.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 23rd percentile. A median shot distance of 16 feet with 56 per cent of his attempts inside 20, and 16.2 per cent conversion — a career high in goals by 7.
The Finesse Game
There is very little skill and there is a great deal of usefulness. He gets to the net front and shoots from there, and 111 shots in fourteen minutes a night is a genuine volume for a fourth-line winger.
14 assists in 82 games is the honest measure of what he creates for others. 18 goals is a career year and will regress, and even at 11 it is a lot from this role.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 232, and among the most feared forwards in the league to play against. He hits constantly and hard, he fights, and he is genuinely difficult below the goal line.
139 penalty minutes is the highest total in this chapter and a direct cost to a penalty kill that finished 22nd. That is the trade the club has decided to make.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, three organisations, and an NHL job built entirely out of being willing to do the thing nobody else will.
At 28 he is a genuinely useful fourth-line winger with more scoring than the role requires. The 139 penalty minutes are worth interrogating on a club that finished 25th on the kill and missed the playoffs by 2 points.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
65.3% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He gets to the net front and shoots from there, and 111 shots in fourteen minutes a night is a genuine volume for a fourth-line winger.”
“He hits constantly and hard, he fights, and he is genuinely difficult below the goal line.”
“He hits constantly and hard, he fights, and he is genuinely difficult below the goal line.”
“6-1 and 232, and among the most feared forwards in the league to play against.”
“Undrafted, three organisations, and an NHL job built entirely out of being willing to do the thing nobody else will.”
“14 assists in 82 games is the honest measure of what he creates for others.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,024 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.6%
- 24th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.7%
- 11th 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: 37 for, 47 against. Expected: 35.8 and 41.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 36 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 74 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 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 73rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.74 a game
- Distance
- 2.25 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.2 mph
- 68th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 1024 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
- CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,024 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zach Aston-Reese | 48.3% | 44.6% | 48.5% |
| Justin Danforth | 52.8% | 41.5% | 42.9% |
| Zach Werenski | 50.3% | 44.1% | 54.4% |
48.3% together, 44.6% for him apart and 48.5% for Aston-Reese apart. He was worse away from Aston-Reese, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Aston-Reese did.
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
144 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.