This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mattias Samuelsson
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Six foot four and 229 pounds, twenty and a half minutes a night, and forty-one games of it.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 150 | 3 | 26 | 29 | 0 | 66 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 174 | 1.7 | 20:47 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
1 goal and 6 assists in 41 games — 7 points at 20:30 a night, plus-4, on 44 shots with 26 penalty minutes. He missed exactly half the season.
49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 707 minutes, the 48th percentile. His ice went 30-32 against an expectation of 29.97-30.65 — almost exactly what the chances said.
The Finesse Game
44 attempts at a median of 54 feet, with 70 per cent from beyond 40 and 2 per cent from inside 20, converting at 2.27 per cent. Three goals in 150 NHL games.
Six assists. He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe, and there is no offensive dimension here at all. The club asks for none.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 229, and he clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it. He wins battles below the goal line and he finishes checks, and he is the only defenceman on this roster who does either reliably.
He blocks shots and he is the man sent out to protect a lead. 26 penalty minutes in 41 games and 66 in 150 for his career is a clean rate for a defenceman who plays this way.
The Intangibles
Thirty-second overall in 2018 and 150 NHL games across four seasons at 24, none of them a full year.
A blue line built on two first-overall picks who neither of them punish anybody needs exactly this player, and the record says he is available for about half a season. That is the whole report: the fit is perfect and the availability is not.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 707 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 49th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.4%
- 68th 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: 30 for, 32 against. Expected: 30.0 and 30.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe 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 201 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.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 707 minutes at five-on-five
- Owen Power14%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 707 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rasmus Dahlin | 49.6% | 49.1% | 51.7% |
| Casey Mittelstadt | 54.7% | 47.1% | 53.0% |
| Jeff Skinner | 46.2% | 50.7% | 49.8% |
49.6% together, 49.1% for him apart and 51.7% for Dahlin 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
60 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.