This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Matt Duchene

Sixty-five points at 33 on a one-year contract, and a career minus-77 across 1,056 games and 809 points.

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

2009-10	COL	81	24	31	55	+1	16	10	1	2	180	13.3	17:44
2010-11	COL	80	27	40	67	-8	33	3	0	2	202	13.4	18:57
2011-12	COL	58	14	14	28	-11	8	5	0	2	132	10.6	16:17
2012-13	COL	47	17	26	43	-12	12	2	0	3	132	12.9	20:55
2013-14	COL	71	23	47	70	+8	19	5	0	6	217	10.6	18:30
2014-15	COL	82	21	34	55	+3	16	2	0	4	207	10.1	18:34
2015-16	COL	76	30	29	59	-8	24	8	0	6	200	15.0	18:35
2016-17	COL	77	18	23	41	-34	12	3	1	3	160	11.3	18:18
2017-18	COL/OTT	82	27	32	59	-22	18	9	0	3	190	14.2	18:20
2018-19	OTT/CBJ	73	31	39	70	-3	8	6	0	1	172	18.0	18:50
2019-20	NSH	66	13	29	42	-4	24	5	0	1	136	9.6	16:53
2020-21	NSH	34	6	7	13	-12	6	1	0	0	73	8.2	15:50
2021-22	NSH	78	43	43	86	+6	38	16	0	6	228	18.9	19:01
2022-23	NSH	71	22	34	56	+4	32	5	0	3	168	13.1	18:19
2023-24	DAL	80	25	40	65	+15	20	6	0	7	172	14.5	16:46
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1056	341	468	809	-77	286	86	2	49	2569	13.3	18:11

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

Eighty games, 25 goals and 40 assists for 65 points with 6 on the power play, 16:46 a night and plus-15. He converted 14.53 per cent of 172 shots against a career 13.27 across 2,569.

He took 52.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,101 minutes, the 69th percentile, and his ice went 54-37 against an expectation of 50.35-46.24. He was bought out in Nashville and signed here for very little, and 65 points at sixteen minutes a night is the best value on any roster in this chapter.

The Finesse Game

The skating is still there at 33 and it is what he has always been — a centre who beats a defenceman wide on the entry rather than passing to get past him.

Four hundred and sixty-eight career assists in 1,056 games and 40 last season. He holds the puck through the neutral zone and makes the play late, which is why he has never been a possession driver and has always produced points.

One hundred and seventy-two shots at a median of 25 feet with 41 per cent from inside 20 and 341 career goals. The shot is a genuine one and 86 career power-play goals say where most of it comes from.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 211 and thick rather than tall, and he does not play a physical game. Twenty penalty minutes in 80 games is a low rate.

He does not forecheck hard and he does not retrieve. A career minus-77 across 1,056 games on a player with 809 points is a number about the defensive half, and it has followed him through Colorado, Ottawa, Columbus and Nashville.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2009 out of Haliburton, fifteen seasons, five clubs, a buyout at 32 and a career revived at 33 on a contender.

Dallas signed a 33-year-old who had just been paid to leave and got 65 points. There is not a shrewder piece of business anywhere in this edition.

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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The skating is still there at 33 and it is what he has always been — a centre who beats a defenceman wide on the entry rather than passing to get past him.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He holds the puck through the neutral zone and makes the play late, which is why he has never been a possession driver and has always produced points.”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“A career minus-77 across 1,056 games on a player with 809 points is a number about the defensive half, and it has followed him through Colorado, Ottawa, Columbus and Nashville.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,101 minutes

Expected goals: 52.1%; 69th pct
Shot attempts: 49.4%; 50th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 37 against. Expected: 50.4 and 46.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

39th

Numbers

69th

The numbers rank him 30 points above where the report does. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2023-24 · 80 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 77th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.91 a game
Distance: 2.74 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.7 mph; 62nd 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

2023-24 · 1101 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, 2023-24

The club: DAL took 54.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.1% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,101 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mason Marchment	52.9%	48.4%	57.7%
Tyler Seguin	52.3%	51.7%	54.6%
Thomas Harley	50.8%	52.9%	56.6%

52.9% together, 48.4% for him apart and 57.7% for Marchment apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Marchment 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

259 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.