Matthew Schaefer
New York Islanders Defense
Nineteen years old, twenty-four minutes a night, twenty-three goals, and fifteen hundred five-on-five minutes.
| Season | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-26 | 82 | 23 | 36 | 59 | +13 | 38 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 222 | 10.4 | 24:41 |
| Career | 82 | 23 | 36 | 59 | +13 | 38 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 222 | 10.4 | 24:41 |
Last Season
Twenty-three goals and 36 assists in all 82 games — 59 points, plus-13, at 24:41 a night with 1,535 five-on-five minutes, the most on the club and among the most in the league.
He was born in September 2007. This was his first professional season.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the reason he went first overall and it is already among the better sets of feet on any blue line in the league. He escapes a forecheck by accelerating into it, and he retrieves pucks he has no business reaching.
Twenty-three goals from a defenceman is a top-two figure at the position and it comes from a point shot he gets through traffic: 305 unblocked attempts, median 45 feet, 60 per cent from beyond forty. That conversion rate will come down. The volume and the release will not.
Thirty-six assists says the passing is the more durable half.
The Physical Game
Six foot two and 186 pounds, which is light, and it is the one honest reservation. He is moved off pucks in front of his own net by grown wingers and cannot yet clear a crease.
Thirty-eight penalty minutes says he competes anyway. Two summers of weight is the standard answer and he has not had one.
The Intangibles
Fifty point six per cent of the expected goals, 59th percentile, with the chances 71.2 to 69.5 in his favour across fifteen hundred minutes against the other team’s best.
Read that with his age attached: an average on-ice result, in the hardest minutes in the league, at nineteen. The plus-13 on a club that finished minus-16 is the other half.
Seven points in his last ten. There is no other page in this book like this one.