This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Matthew Kessel

Thirty-nine games at 16:48 in a first season, from a fifth-round pick.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2022-23	STL	2	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	15:10
2023-24	STL	39	1	6	7	0	12	0	0	0	28	3.6	16:48
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	41	1	6	7	-1	12	0	0	0	31	3.2	16:43

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

39 games, 1 goal and 6 assists for 7 points, 12 penalty minutes, 16:48 a night and even. He took 43.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 622 minutes, the 18th percentile, and his ice went 19-19 against an expectation of 20.46-26.84.

A goal of finishing below what the chances were worth and eight goals of goaltending above them. Nineteen goals for and nineteen against on a 43 per cent chance share is a crease doing a great deal of work.

The Finesse Game

42 attempts at a median of 53 feet with 69 per cent of them from beyond forty and 10 per cent from inside twenty, 25 of those on goal, converted at 4.0 per cent.

Six career assists and one goal in 41 games. He plays a simple game with the puck and gets it to the far wall rather than trying anything through the middle, which for a fifth-round pick in a first season is the correct instinct.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 212 and took 12 penalty minutes.

Twelve career penalty minutes in 41 games. He is a large, straightforward defenceman who plays the net front and clears it, and there is more physical game available here than sixteen minutes a night has asked for.

The Intangibles

One hundred and fiftieth overall in 2020 by St. Louis, two seasons, one organisation, and 7 points in 41 games.

A career minus-1 in 41 games. He was a fifth-round pick who reached the league at 23 and took sixteen and a half minutes a night in his first season.

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.

clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He is a large, straightforward defenceman who plays the net front and clears it, and there is more physical game available here than sixteen minutes a night has asked for.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He plays a simple game with the puck and gets it to the far wall rather than trying anything through the middle, which for a fifth-round pick in a first season is the correct instinct.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 622 minutes

Expected goals: 43.3%; 12th pct
Shot attempts: 45.7%; 20th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 19 against. Expected: 20.5 and 26.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

43rd

Numbers

12th

The report ranks him 31 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 68 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 · 39 games

Top speed: 20.9 mph; 17th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.31 a game
Distance: 2.36 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.7 mph; 63rd 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

2023-24 · 622 minutes at five-on-five

Torey Krugoff the roster61%
Nick Leddy13%
Scott Perunovich10%

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: STL took 44.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.3% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: 622 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Torey Krug	43.2%	43.3%	46.1%
Jordan Kyrou	46.7%	41.7%	51.4%
Robert Thomas	47.3%	41.4%	49.8%

43.2% together, 43.3% for him apart and 46.1% for Krug apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

42 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.