Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

24

Mathieu Olivier

Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing

18 goals and 139 penalty minutes, and 56 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20NSH8011+1400060.07:33
2020-21NSH30325-1701002512.010:55
2021-22NSH10011-31400050.010:06
2022-23CBJ6651015-2081001756.711:38
2023-24CBJ545712-470011559.111:17
2024-25CBJ82181432-413901511116.214:28
2025-26 so far
Career250313566-3137812727711.212:13

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.

47.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 30th 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 25th. 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.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,024 minutes

Expected goals
47.8%
30th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.2%
12th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 52 for, 48 against. Expected: 38.1 and 41.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
56th
Numbers
30th

The report ranks him 26 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 337 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.

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 47.8% — 0.5 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

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Zach Aston-Reese50.2%45.0%51.1%
Justin Danforth53.8%42.9%43.8%
Zach Werenski49.0%47.0%53.1%

50.2% together, 45.0% for him apart and 51.1% 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.