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

Matt Duchene

82 points at 34 on a 19.7 per cent shooting rate, which is the highest of his career and will not survive the year.

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	DAL	82	30	52	82	+13	12	8	0	6	152	19.7	17:09
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1138	371	520	891	-64	298	94	2	55	2721	13.6	18:06

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

30 goals and 52 assists in 82 games for 82 points, plus-13, on 17:09 a night — and only 152 shots to do it with.

19.7 per cent shooting is the number that decides how this report reads. It is the highest rate of his 16-year career by a wide margin, in his age-34 season, on a chance share of 51.2 per cent that is merely good. 30 goals on 152 shots is a season nobody repeats.

The Finesse Game

Still one of the better skating centres of his generation and the game has aged well because it was never built on top speed. He changes pace rather than out-racing people, and the puck skills in tight are as good as they have ever been.

44 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet, so the locations justify a high conversion rate even if 19.7 per cent is too high. The playmaking has become the larger half of him — 52 assists — and at 34 that is the correct migration.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 211, and he plays a low-contact game. He does not forecheck with weight, does not win board battles against defencemen, and does not go to the net front except on the power play.

12 penalty minutes across 82 games. The durability has been excellent — three straight full seasons after the years when it was not.

The Intangibles

Bought off the scrapheap after Nashville paid him to leave, and he has now given Dallas two of the best seasons of his career on almost no money. That is a genuinely impressive second act and he has been open about how much the buyout stung.

The projection is the awkward part. A 34-year-old who scored 30 goals on 152 shots is being paid for the goals and is likely to deliver the assists. He will still be a useful top-six centre at 60 points. The club should not plan on 82.

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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.15 penalty minutes a game over 82, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The playmaking has become the larger half of him — 52 assists — and at 34 that is the correct migration.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“5-11 and 211, and he plays a low-contact game.”
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 board battles against defencemen”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“does not go to the net front except on the power play”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,074 minutes

Expected goals: 51.1%; 64th pct
Shot attempts: 50.4%; 57th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 45 against. Expected: 53.6 and 51.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

76th

Numbers

64th

The two rank him within 12 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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: 22.0 mph; 37th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.94 a game
Distance: 2.74 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.2 mph; 39th 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 · 1074 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: DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,074 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mason Marchment	49.8%	53.0%	46.2%
Thomas Harley	56.6%	47.9%	51.3%
Esa Lindell	51.5%	50.9%	50.2%

49.8% together, 53.0% for him apart and 46.2% for Marchment apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Marchment behind.

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

225 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 32 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.