Mattias Samuelsson

The best plus-minus in the league, and a shot-attempt share in the 26th percentile.

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

2020-21	BUF	12	0	2	2	-8	4	0	0	0	10	0.0	18:02
2021-22	BUF	42	0	10	10	-10	16	0	0	0	44	0.0	20:00
2022-23	BUF	55	2	8	10	+14	20	0	0	0	76	2.6	22:11
2023-24	BUF	41	1	6	7	+4	26	0	0	1	44	2.3	20:30
2024-25	BUF	62	4	10	14	+3	22	0	0	1	52	7.7	19:18
2025-26	BUF	78	13	28	41	+41	28	0	1	3	109	11.9	22:50
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	290	20	64	84	+44	116	0	1	5	335	6.0	21:01

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

13 goals and 28 assists in 78 games — 41 points, and plus-41, at 22:50 a night. He had 84 points in his previous 290 career games.

The Finesse Game

Almost none of it is his. He is a defensive defenceman who had a season of offensive luck: 13 goals from 161 unblocked attempts of which only 8 per cent came from inside 20 feet, median 45. 13 goals from the point at that distance is not a skill anybody repeats.

The passing is simple and safe. 28 assists is a career outlier from a man who had never had more than a dozen.

The Physical Game

The actual job, and he is very good at it. 6-4, 229, and he clears his crease, closes gaps hard, and kills penalties. 28 penalty minutes in 78 games of heavy defensive work is remarkable discipline.

The Intangibles

The plus-41 led the National Hockey League and it is the least informative number on this page. At 5-on-5 the goals went 81-56 — plus-13, not plus-41 — and the expected goals went 65.0 to 62.2, which is dead level. He was on for 47.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 26th percentile.

So: a club that outscored its expected goals by more than any other in the league, and its most-trusted defenceman riding the top of that wave. He is a good defensive player having an unrepeatable season in the counting columns.

Price the defending. Do not price the 41.

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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
6 of 99 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 6.1%, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:16 a game at five-on-five, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,503 minutes

Expected goals: 51.1%; 64th pct
Shot attempts: 47.9%; 35th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 81 for, 56 against. Expected: 65.0 and 62.2.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

49th

Numbers

64th

The two rank him within 15 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 — 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, 2025-26 · 78 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 90th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.19 a game
Distance: 3.18 miles a game
Hardest shot: 98.1 mph; 90th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 14 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1503 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: BUF took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — level with the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,503 minutes at five-on-five — 98th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Rasmus Dahlin	51.8%	50.1%	57.6%
Tage Thompson	52.7%	50.3%	49.0%
Peyton Krebs	54.1%	49.8%	44.5%

51.8% together, 50.1% for him apart and 57.6% for Dahlin apart. Dahlin was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

161 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 61% from beyond forty.