Michael Bunting

Eleven of his 19 goals came on the power play, and his line conceded 53 goals against an expectation of 37.4.

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

2018-19	ARI	5	1	0	1	0	2	0	0	0	5	20.0	9:33
2020-21	ARI	21	10	3	13	-1	12	3	0	1	38	26.3	16:42
2021-22	TOR	79	23	40	63	+27	80	2	0	2	175	13.1	15:33
2022-23	TOR	82	23	26	49	+21	103	7	0	4	174	13.2	15:48
2023-24	CAR/PIT	81	19	36	55	-19	57	7	0	3	168	11.3	15:41
2024-25	PIT/NSH	76	19	19	38	-19	68	11	0	1	155	12.3	15:32
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	344	95	124	219	+9	322	30	0	11	715	13.3	15:37

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

76 games between Pittsburgh and Nashville, 19 goals and 19 assists for 38 points at 15:32 a night, on 155 shots at 12.26 per cent. Eleven of the 19 goals came on the power play. 68 penalty minutes. Minus-19. He arrived in the March deal that sent Thomas Novak to Pittsburgh.

The on-ice figures below cover both clubs. A 51.3 per cent chance share is a good number, and it is the goals against that stand out: 32-43 against an expected 39.69-36.98. He scored roughly what he deserved to and was on the ice for sixteen more goals against than the chances warranted — the largest such gap of any skater in this edition, and none of it his doing.

The Finesse Game

48 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 21. He is a net-front player, and eleven power-play goals is where that gets paid.

The hands are decent in tight and the release is quick enough at close range. From any distance the shot is ordinary. He is not a skater who separates and he is not a passer who creates; what he does is arrive at the blue paint before the defenceman and stay there once he has.

The Physical Game

186 pounds doing a 210-pound job, and 68 penalty minutes is what that costs.

He is genuinely irritating to play against — finishes checks, talks, and draws penalties at a good rate because opponents want to hit him. The willingness is not in question. The frame underneath it is.

The Intangibles

Undrafted until the fourth round, an American League career before the NHL, and a 23-goal rookie season at 26.

Three clubs in eighteen months is the other half of the picture: this is a game that is easy to like on first viewing and harder to keep on a roster.

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.

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.

net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He is a net-front player, and eleven power-play goals is where that gets paid.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“he is not a passer who creates”
agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He is genuinely irritating to play against — finishes checks, talks, and draws penalties at a good rate because opponents want to hit him.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“186 pounds doing a 210-pound job, and 68 penalty minutes is what that costs.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 950 minutes

Expected goals: 51.8%; 69th pct
Shot attempts: 53.2%; 84th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 43 against. Expected: 39.7 and 37.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

69th

The numbers rank him 52 points above where the report does. 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 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 · 76 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 46th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.04 a game
Distance: 2.40 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.1 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 with PIT · 747 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: NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 2.6 above the club he did it on.
The role: 950 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Evgeni Malkin	46.8%	55.8%	48.9%
Erik Karlsson	53.1%	51.2%	48.1%
Matt Grzelcyk	52.7%	51.5%	45.4%

46.8% together, 55.8% for him apart and 48.9% for Malkin apart. He was better away from Malkin, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Malkin.

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

233 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.