Mattias Ekholm
Edmonton Oilers Defense #14
The defenseman who makes mistakes disappear — quietly, 20 minutes a night, against the other team's best.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | NSH | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 12:25 |
| 2012-13 | NSH | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 16:05 |
| 2013-14 | NSH | 62 | 1 | 8 | 9 | -8 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 1.7 | 16:49 |
| 2014-15 | NSH | 80 | 7 | 11 | 18 | +12 | 52 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 86 | 8.1 | 19:01 |
| 2015-16 | NSH | 82 | 8 | 27 | 35 | +14 | 44 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 114 | 7.0 | 20:15 |
| 2016-17 | NSH | 82 | 3 | 20 | 23 | +4 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 120 | 2.5 | 23:28 |
| 2017-18 | NSH | 81 | 10 | 24 | 34 | +25 | 46 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 135 | 7.4 | 23:35 |
| 2018-19 | NSH | 80 | 8 | 36 | 44 | +27 | 47 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 146 | 5.5 | 23:22 |
| 2019-20 | NSH | 68 | 8 | 25 | 33 | -1 | 32 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 154 | 5.2 | 23:22 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 48 | 6 | 17 | 23 | +19 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 110 | 5.5 | 22:52 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 76 | 6 | 25 | 31 | +14 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 145 | 4.1 | 23:29 |
| 2022-23 | NSH/EDM | 78 | 9 | 23 | 32 | +28 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 135 | 6.7 | 21:29 |
| 2023-24 | EDM | 79 | 11 | 34 | 45 | +44 | 47 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 177 | 6.2 | 21:03 |
| 2024-25 | EDM | 65 | 9 | 24 | 33 | +11 | 30 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 143 | 6.3 | 22:12 |
| 2025-26 | EDM | 82 | 6 | 35 | 41 | +32 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 131 | 4.6 | 20:36 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 966 | 92 | 309 | 401 | +219 | 458 | 14 | 4 | 20 | 1655 | 5.6 | 21:39 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
6 goals and 41 points in all 82 games, and a plus-32 that led the team by a distance. 20 and a half minutes a night, most of them against people who are paid to score.
The Finesse Game
He moves the puck better than he gets credit for, mostly because everything he does is undramatic. The first pass is on time and on the tape. The exit is usually the simple one. When the simple one is not there he will skate the puck out himself rather than throw it away, which at his age is a quiet act of confidence.
He does not shoot much and does not need to. On the rare occasions he activates into the play, it is because he read it 2 seconds earlier and knows the ice will still be there when he arrives.
The skating is fine rather than fast. What separates him is gap control: he closes to the right distance at the right moment, so attackers reach the blue line with no room and no time, and the rush dies without a single spectacular play being made. Watch his side of the ice for a full period and it looks like nothing is happening there. That is the entire point of him.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 225, and he uses all of it correctly. He is strong on the wall, excellent along the goal line, and he ends cycles by simply removing the other team’s forward from the puck. None of it is violent. He does not hunt hits and has never needed to.
He is 36 with 966 games on his legs. Foot speed is the thing to watch — it is the first thing to go for a defenseman of this type, and when it goes, the gap control that makes him valuable goes with it.
The Intangibles
He is the partner who makes an aggressive, offense-first defenseman viable, which is no small matter on this roster: a good deal of Bouchard’s freedom exists because Ekholm is behind him cleaning up. Coaches trust him with the last minute of a 1-goal game and the first minute after a bad one.
For a player this central to how a team defends, he goes almost entirely unmentioned during games. That is usually the highest compliment available to a defenseman.
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
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
18.5% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
58.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +11.1, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,462 minutes
- Expected goals
- 58.3%
- 98th pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.9%
- 93rd 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: 84 for, 67 against. Expected: 81.3 and 58.3.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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, 2025-26 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 72nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.37 a game
- Distance
- 2.96 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 98.4 mph
- 91st 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 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
4
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 4 assists, 13 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1462 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, 2025-26
- The club
- EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.3% — 6.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,462 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evan Bouchard | 58.4% | 57.3% | 56.5% |
| Connor McDavid | 60.9% | 54.0% | 51.7% |
| Zach Hyman | 61.8% | 55.9% | 48.7% |
58.4% together, 57.3% for him apart and 56.5% for Bouchard 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
195 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 59% from beyond forty.