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

Mats Zuccarello

54 points at 37, and a line that came out 47-40 against an expected 39-40.

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

2010-11	NYR	42	6	17	23	+3	4	0	0	2	74	8.1	14:10
2011-12	NYR	10	2	1	3	0	6	1	0	1	10	20.0	10:03
2012-13	NYR	15	3	5	8	+10	8	0	0	0	27	11.1	16:25
2013-14	NYR	77	19	40	59	+11	32	4	1	4	170	11.2	17:08
2014-15	NYR	78	15	34	49	+17	45	0	0	3	154	9.7	17:16
2015-16	NYR	81	26	35	61	+2	34	7	0	4	166	15.7	18:29
2016-17	NYR	80	15	44	59	+15	26	5	0	3	189	7.9	18:50
2017-18	NYR	80	16	37	53	-10	36	1	0	3	178	9.0	18:55
2018-19	NYR/DAL	48	12	28	40	-8	24	3	0	1	104	11.5	19:51
2019-20	MIN	65	15	22	37	-9	18	3	0	2	96	15.6	15:56
2020-21	MIN	42	11	24	35	+9	8	3	0	0	74	14.9	16:41
2021-22	MIN	70	24	55	79	+21	24	7	0	2	159	15.1	18:35
2022-23	MIN	78	22	45	67	-3	26	9	0	3	198	11.1	20:12
2023-24	MIN	69	12	51	63	-5	30	5	0	1	173	6.9	18:54
2024-25	MIN	69	19	35	54	0	22	3	0	6	151	12.6	19:39
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	904	217	473	690	+53	343	51	1	35	1923	11.3	18:05

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

19 goals and 35 assists in 69 games for 54 points, even, on 19:39 a night with 6 game-winners.

49.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 47th percentile. His on-ice goals were 47-40 against an expected 40.5-41.5 — seven goals of finishing above expectation, with the goals going his way at both ends.

The Finesse Game

The passing is the whole player and it has not declined. He holds the puck on the wall until a defender commits and puts it through the space he leaves, and 35 assists at 37 on a club that scored 228 goals is the most impressive individual line in this chapter.

151 shots and 19 goals at 12.6 per cent, with only a quarter of them from inside 20 feet. He is a distributor and shoots when the option closes.

The Physical Game

5-8 and 181, and there is nothing here. He does not forecheck with weight, does not win pucks on the wall, and avoids the interior.

22 penalty minutes over 69 games. The durability at 37 has been reasonable and the legs are the thing to watch — a playmaker who cannot get to the wall has nowhere to work from.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, fifteen seasons, two organisations, and a partnership with Kirill Kaprizov that has defined both of their careers here.

At 38 the projection is 45 points and a declining five-on-five share. He is the second-best passer on the roster and there is nobody behind him.

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.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
4 of his 19 goals late or in overtime, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:51 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The passing is the whole player and it has not declined. He holds the puck on the wall until a defender commits and puts it through the space he leaves”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“5-8 and 181, and there is nothing here.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck with weight”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not win pucks on the wall”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, fifteen seasons, two organisations, and a partnership with Kirill Kaprizov that has defined both of their careers here.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,025 minutes

Expected goals: 49.4%; 48th pct
Shot attempts: 47.7%; 31st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 47 for, 40 against. Expected: 40.5 and 41.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

48th

The report ranks him 24 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 — 76 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 · 69 games

Top speed: 21.6 mph; 24th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.38 a game
Distance: 2.90 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.9 mph; 71st 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1025 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: MIN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,025 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Marco Rossi	51.3%	45.5%	55.1%
Brock Faber	47.7%	50.8%	45.5%
Matt Boldy	51.8%	47.2%	54.7%

51.3% together, 45.5% for him apart and 55.1% for Rossi apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Rossi and did not follow 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

211 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 26% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.