This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mattias Samuelsson
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Six-four and 229 in a first NHL season at twenty-two, and 21 per cent of his shots from the slot — the 97th percentile for a defenceman.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 54 | 0 | 12 | 12 | -18 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 54 | 0.0 | 19:34 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
0 goals and 10 assists in 42 games — 10 points at 20:00 a night, minus-10, on 44 shots and 16 penalty minutes.
Twenty minutes a night in a first real NHL season at twenty-two.
46.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 728 minutes, the 25th percentile. His ice went 32-46 against an expectation of 26.5-30.72 — five goals of scoring above the chances, and fifteen more conceded than they predicted. Buffalo’s goaltending finished 26.5 goals below expectation last season, 28th in the league, and a great deal of that number lives in this paragraph.
38.5 per cent of his even-strength time was spent in the offensive zone, the 3rd percentile among defencemen.
The Finesse Game
44 attempts and no goals. 21 per cent of his shots came from inside the slot — the 97th percentile for a defenceman — which is a genuinely unusual chart and produced nothing, because 44 attempts is not enough to produce anything.
0.81 even-strength points per 60 is the 32nd percentile. Ten assists in 42 games from a 6-4 rookie is fine; nobody is drafting him for it.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 229, and nothing gets to the front of his net without paying for it. 7.15 hits per 60 is the 86th percentile among defencemen with 4.29 blocks at the 55th.
He drew 0.71 penalties per 60, the 89th percentile among defencemen, and finished plus-0.14 on drawn against taken at the 89th — a heavy defenceman who is not a discipline problem, which is the rarer combination.
Top speed 21.8 mph at the 44th percentile with 2.4 bursts above 20 mph per 60 at the 75th. He gets up to speed better than the size suggests and has no top gear, which is the ordinary profile for the position and the build.
The Intangibles
Thirty-second overall in 2018, out of the US development programme by way of Western Michigan, and 54 NHL games.
He is 22, and Buffalo signed him for seven years in the summer. On a blue line built around a first-overall puck-mover and a first-overall puck-mover arriving behind him, a 6-4 left shot who hits and blocks and does not foul is the piece that makes the other two possible — and that is what the club has just paid for.
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
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
39% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“7.15 hits per 60 is the 86th percentile among defencemen”
“6-4 and 229, and nothing gets to the front of his net without paying for it”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 728 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.3%
- 25th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.5%
- 33rd 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: 32 for, 46 against. Expected: 26.5 and 30.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 28 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2021-22 · 42 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 62nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.79 a game
- Distance
- 2.76 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.4 mph
- 38th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 · 728 minutes at five-on-five
- Jacob Bryson23%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.3% — level with the club he did it on.
- The role
- 728 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Casey Fitzgerald | 44.0% | 47.3% | 50.8% |
| Jeff Skinner | 54.2% | 42.5% | 48.4% |
| Dylan Cozens | 53.4% | 43.9% | 46.5% |
44.0% together, 47.3% for him apart and 50.8% for Fitzgerald apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
56 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 0 of them goals. 20% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.