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.
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
0.20 penalty minutes a game over 82, 9th percentile among defencemen
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
“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.”
“He cannot clear a net front, loses board battles to NHL forwards, and against a heavy forecheck the puck ends up behind him.”
“loses board battles to NHL forwards”
“16 penalty minutes over 82 games. He does not compensate with his stick, which is honest and does not help.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,398 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.6%
- 24th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 54th 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: 62 for, 65 against. Expected: 54.5 and 62.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 15 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 — 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 47th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.61 a game
- Distance
- 2.92 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.4 mph
- 56th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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 with PIT · 1398 minutes at five-on-five
- 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 | 46.0% | 47.3% | 51.1% |
| Sidney Crosby | 45.8% | 47.4% | 56.1% |
| Rickard Rakell | 47.2% | 46.3% | 55.5% |
46.0% together, 47.3% for him apart and 51.1% for Karlsson apart. Karlsson was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for 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
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.