This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Matt Roy
Los Angeles Kings Defense
A seventh-round pick with a 94th-percentile registered shot and the best chance share on the blue line.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | LAK | 25 | 2 | 4 | 6 | -1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 34 | 5.9 | 17:08 |
| 2019-20 | LAK | 70 | 4 | 14 | 18 | +16 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 112 | 3.6 | 18:07 |
| 2020-21 | LAK | 44 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 57 | 3.5 | 19:15 |
| 2021-22 | LAK | 67 | 2 | 19 | 21 | +23 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 153 | 1.3 | 20:59 |
| 2022-23 | LAK | 82 | 9 | 17 | 26 | +8 | 22 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 135 | 6.7 | 18:47 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 288 | 19 | 62 | 81 | +46 | 76 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 491 | 3.9 | 19:04 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
9 goals and 17 assists in all 82 games — 26 points — at 18:47 a night. Plus-8, 135 shots, 22 penalty minutes.
54.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 86th percentile — the best figure of any Los Angeles defenceman — with his ice at 60-59 against an expectation of 59.41-48.72. Ten goals worse at the defensive end than the chances, which is the goaltending and not him.
Nine goals is a career high by five and came on 135 shots, his highest volume in a season.
Five seasons, 288 games, 81 points, all of them in Los Angeles.
The Finesse Game
135 shots at a median of 51 feet, 7 per cent from inside twenty and 70 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 89 shots on goal, 2 goals, 2.25 per cent — below the league rate for defencemen. Inside forty: 46 shots, 7 goals, 15.22 per cent.
Seven of his nine goals came from the third of his volume he takes from inside forty feet. That is the same split this book has now found on every blue line it has examined, and Roy is a clean example: two goals from eighty-nine long shots, seven from forty-six close ones.
99.0 mph at the 94th percentile, on twenty-nine slap shots — the hardest registered shot on the Los Angeles blue line, and one of the harder ones in the league from a defenceman who was drafted 194th overall.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 220, and twenty-two penalty minutes in eighty-two games.
Top speed 21.6 mph, the 19th percentile; bursts 0.5 a game, the 23rd; 2.52 miles a game, the 45th.
He is the heaviest defenceman Los Angeles dresses and he uses it: he clears the front of his own net and finishes checks along the wall. Twenty-two penalty minutes across a full season from a defenceman who plays that way is a genuinely low figure.
He blocks shots and is on the first penalty-killing pair.
The Intangibles
One hundred and ninety-fourth overall in 2015 out of Michigan Tech, two American-league seasons, and 288 NHL games since.
53.2 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 65th percentile — the most neutral deployment on the blue line, which is why the 86th-percentile chance share is the most trustworthy number of the four.
He is the least famous of the Los Angeles defencemen and by this book’s reading the second-best of them.
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
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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is the heaviest defenceman Los Angeles dresses and he uses it: he clears the front of his own net and finishes checks along the wall.”
“He blocks shots and is on the first penalty-killing pair.”
“He blocks shots and is on the first penalty-killing pair.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,315 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.9%
- 86th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.3%
- 73rd 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: 60 for, 59 against. Expected: 59.4 and 48.7.
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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 52nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.46 a game
- Distance
- 2.52 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 99.0 mph
- 92nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1315 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, 2022-23
- The club
- LAK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.9% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,315 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Durzi | 52.3% | 60.1% | 48.9% |
| Phillip Danault | 58.4% | 53.4% | 52.8% |
| Viktor Arvidsson | 61.1% | 52.2% | 51.9% |
52.3% together, 60.1% for him apart and 48.9% for Durzi apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Durzi 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
187 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.