Mattias Ekholm
Edmonton Oilers Defense #14
The defenseman who makes mistakes disappear — quietly, twenty minutes a night, against the other team's best.
| Season | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-26 | 82 | 6 | 35 | 41 | +32 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 131 | 4.6 | 20:36 |
| Career | 966 | 92 | 309 | 401 | +219 | 458 | 14 | 4 | 20 | 1655 | 5.6 | 21:39 |
Last Season
Six goals and 41 points in all 82 games, and a plus-32 that led the team by a distance. Twenty 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 two 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
Six-five 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 thirty-six 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 one-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.