This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Matt Grzelcyk
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
Five-ten and 180 with a career plus-137 in 445 games, and a Boston kid who was drafted by Boston.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 445 | 25 | 110 | 135 | +137 | 237 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 647 | 3.9 | 18:04 |
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
63 games with Boston, 2 goals and 9 assists for 11 points, none on the power play, 37 penalty minutes, 17:36 a night and plus-13. He took 46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,008 minutes, the 30th percentile, and his ice went 41-29 against an expectation of 40.56-46.17.
Level with the chances at the offensive end and seventeen goals of goaltending above them at the other, which is the largest such figure of anybody arriving in Pittsburgh. He took seventeen and a half minutes a night for a 109-point club and came out plus-13 on a 47 per cent chance share.
The Finesse Game
94 attempts at a median of 50 feet with 70 per cent of them from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty, 55 of those on goal, converted at 3.4 per cent against a career 3.86 across 647 shots.
110 career assists against 25 goals in 445 games. He is a small, quick defenceman who solves a forecheck by skating out of it rather than by rimming the puck, and four assists for every goal is what that produces — the exit is the product, not the shot.
The Physical Game
He is 5-10 and 180 and took 37 penalty minutes.
237 career penalty minutes in 445 games. At his size there is no version of his game that involves winning a battle by strength, so he plays the puck rather than the man and gets to it first; the penalties come from the ones where he does not.
The Intangibles
Eighty-fifth overall in 2012 by Boston, eight seasons, two organisations, and 135 points in 445 games.
He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, drafted by the club down the road, and played every one of his first 445 games for it. A career plus-137 is the argument that a 5-10 defenceman can take real minutes if he is quick enough.
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.
- 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.
“He is a small, quick defenceman who solves a forecheck by skating out of it rather than by rimming the puck, and four assists for every goal is what that produces — the exit is the product, not the shot.”
“At his size there is no version of his game that involves winning a battle by strength, so he plays the puck rather than the man and gets to it first; the penalties come from the ones where he does not.”
“A career plus-137 is the argument that a 5-10 defenceman can take real minutes if he is quick enough.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,008 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.8%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 45%
- 17th 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: 41 for, 29 against. Expected: 40.6 and 46.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 8 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 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 · 63 games
- Top speed
- 21.2 mph
- 31st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.38 a game
- Distance
- 2.45 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.1 mph
- 41st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 with BOS · 1008 minutes at five-on-five
- Kevin Shattenkirkoff the roster10%
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
- BOS took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 2.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,008 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charlie McAvoy | 51.0% | 38.6% | 50.8% |
| David Pastrnak | 48.8% | 45.5% | 53.6% |
| Trent Frederic | 46.6% | 46.8% | 51.7% |
51.0% together, 38.6% for him apart and 50.8% for McAvoy apart. He was worse away from McAvoy, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than McAvoy 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
94 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 51 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.