Matt Grzelcyk
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
40 points and 39 assists from a 5-10 defenceman, and 1 goal.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | BOS | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0.0 | 12:29 |
| 2017-18 | BOS | 61 | 3 | 12 | 15 | +21 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 3.7 | 16:44 |
| 2018-19 | BOS | 66 | 3 | 15 | 18 | +9 | 68 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 3.3 | 19:08 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 68 | 4 | 17 | 21 | +15 | 34 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 112 | 3.6 | 18:04 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 37 | 5 | 15 | 20 | +11 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 80 | 6.3 | 19:45 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 73 | 4 | 20 | 24 | +22 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 118 | 3.4 | 18:44 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 75 | 4 | 22 | 26 | +46 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 102 | 3.9 | 17:14 |
| 2023-24 | BOS | 63 | 2 | 9 | 11 | +13 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 59 | 3.4 | 17:36 |
| 2024-25 | PIT | 82 | 1 | 39 | 40 | -6 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 1.1 | 20:37 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 527 | 26 | 149 | 175 | +131 | 253 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 741 | 3.5 | 18:27 |
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
1 goal and 39 assists in 82 games for 40 points, minus-6, on 20:37 a night with Pittsburgh.
39 assists and 1 goal is one of the more unusual lines in this edition — 94 shots and a single goal from a defenceman playing 20 minutes a night. The passing carried the whole season.
The Finesse Game
The first pass and the puck movement are genuinely very good. He escapes a forecheck by turning away from it, moves it early, and runs a breakout as well as any small defenceman in the league.
There is no shot. 1 goal on 94 attempts is not variance at this point in a career; the release is soft and killers do not respect it, which limits his power-play value to being the man who moves it rather than the man who uses it.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 180, and it decides everything. He cannot clear a net front, loses board battles to NHL forwards, and against a heavy forecheck the puck ends up behind him.
16 penalty minutes over 82 games. He does not compensate with his stick, which is honest and does not help.
The Intangibles
A third-round pick, eight seasons in Boston as a third-pair puck-mover, one in Pittsburgh with the most points of his career, and a one-year deal here.
At 31 the projection is what happened: 35 points, no defence, and a great deal of useful zone exits. On a club that finished 32nd in chance share, a defenceman who can get the puck out is worth buying.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,398 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.6%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 50%
- 53rd 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: 48 for, 58 against. Expected: 53.6 and 61.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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 with PIT · 1398 minutes at five-on-five
- Erik Karlsson49%
- Kris Letang36%
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
- PIT took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,398 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Karlsson | 45.0% | 48.2% | 50.6% |
| Sidney Crosby | 46.4% | 46.7% | 55.2% |
| Rickard Rakell | 47.8% | 45.8% | 54.3% |
45.0% together, 48.2% for him apart and 50.6% for Karlsson apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
150 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.