This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mattias Samuelsson

Six-foot-four, 229 pounds, twenty-two minutes a night, and the only defenceman here who hurts anybody.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	109	2	20	22	-4	40	0	0	0	130	1.5	20:53

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

2 goals and 8 assists in 55 games — 10 points at 22:11 a night, plus-14, on 76 shots and 20 penalty minutes.

49.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,050 minutes, the 48th percentile, starting 40.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end — the 23rd percentile, the hardest defensive assignment on the blue line. His ice went 55-48 against an expectation of 47.92-48.8.

He missed twenty-seven games with a lower-body injury.

The Finesse Game

76 attempts at a median of 49 feet, 67 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 2.63 per cent. 22 points in 109 career games.

There is no offensive game and the club has not asked for one — it has two first-overall picks to move the puck. The first pass is simple, safe and made under pressure without panic, which on this pairing is the entire requirement.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 229, and he is the only defenceman on this roster who makes forwards uncomfortable. He clears the crease, he finishes his check along the wall, and he defends the net front with weight rather than with a stick.

The skating is adequate at 22.0 mph, the 34th percentile, and he covers 3.10 miles a game at the 85th, which says he works. Buffalo’s problem is structural rather than individual: two 6-6 puck-movers and one heavy defenceman is not a defence corps, it is a power play with a bodyguard.

The Intangibles

Thirty-second overall in 2018, and he signed a seven-year extension before he had played 100 NHL games — an unusual bet on a defensive defenceman.

He is 23. The availability is the risk: 109 games in three seasons, and a club that already cannot defend cannot afford its one defensive defenceman to be hurt for a third of every year.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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.

workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:05 a game at five-on-five, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He clears the crease, he finishes his check along the wall, and he defends the net front with weight rather than with a stick.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“he is the only defenceman on this roster who makes forwards uncomfortable”
transitionpresent and ordinary· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is simple, safe and made under pressure without panic, which on this pairing is the entire requirement.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,050 minutes

Expected goals: 49.5%; 48th pct
Shot attempts: 48.3%; 40th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 55 for, 48 against. Expected: 47.9 and 48.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

61st

Numbers

48th

The two rank him within 13 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1050 minutes at five-on-five

Rasmus Dahlin64%
Owen Power11%

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, 2022-23

The club: BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.5% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,050 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Rasmus Dahlin	50.0%	48.7%	56.4%
Tage Thompson	50.4%	49.1%	51.2%
Jeff Skinner	50.3%	49.2%	53.2%

50.0% together, 48.7% for him apart and 56.4% 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

101 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.