This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mattias Samuelsson

6-4, 229 pounds, 62 games, and a 45.3 per cent chance share on a long contract.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	212	7	36	43	+3	88	0	0	2	226	3.1	20:21

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

4 goals and 10 assists in 62 games for 14 points, plus-3, on 19:18 a night.

45.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 19th percentile, over 920 minutes — the worst share among the club’s regular defencemen. His on-ice goals were 37-43 against an expected 34-40.

The Finesse Game

Very little. 52 shots in 62 games with 69 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet, and a first pass that is safe and slow.

The puck leaves his stick without incident and does not start anything, which on a blue line with three genuine puck-movers is an acceptable division of labour and does not excuse a 15th-percentile share.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 229, and this is the entire case for him. He clears the crease, boxes out, and is difficult to get through in front of the net.

22 penalty minutes over 62 games is disciplined for the style. The availability is the problem: he has cleared 70 games once in five seasons, and the club signed him long before finding that out.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick who was excellent at 21, signed a seven-year contract, and has not been that player since.

At 25 with most of the deal still to run, this is now one of the more difficult contracts on the roster. There is a useful shutdown defenceman in there; there is also a 15th-percentile season and a body that has not held up.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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, 10th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He clears the crease, boxes out, and is difficult to get through in front of the net.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He clears the crease, boxes out, and is difficult to get through in front of the net.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The puck leaves his stick without incident and does not start anything, which on a blue line with three genuine puck-movers is an acceptable division of labour and does not excuse a 15th-percentile share.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 920 minutes

Expected goals: 45.6%; 19th pct
Shot attempts: 45.9%; 17th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 43 against. Expected: 33.5 and 40.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

19th

The two rank him within 2 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2024-25 · 62 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 81st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.50 a game
Distance: 2.66 miles a game
Hardest shot: 92.8 mph; 67th 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 920 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, 2024-25

The club: BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.6% — 2.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 920 minutes at five-on-five — 49th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Owen Power	42.4%	47.4%	48.7%
Rasmus Dahlin	49.8%	43.9%	54.6%
Tage Thompson	49.2%	44.3%	51.4%

42.4% together, 47.4% for him apart and 48.7% for Power 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

78 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.