Photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Michael Kesselring
San Jose Sharks Defense #7
190 games, no goals last season, and 50 penalty minutes in 34.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | ARI | 9 | 0 | 3 | 3 | -1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 17:06 |
| 2023-24 | ARI | 65 | 5 | 16 | 21 | +11 | 66 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 76 | 6.6 | 15:48 |
| 2024-25 | UTA | 82 | 7 | 22 | 29 | +4 | 89 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 150 | 4.7 | 17:41 |
| 2025-26 | BUF | 34 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 0.0 | 13:24 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 190 | 12 | 43 | 55 | +14 | 211 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 280 | 4.3 | 16:15 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
No goals and 2 assists in 34 games — 2 points, even in plus-minus, at 13:24 a night with 50 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Buffalo.
The Finesse Game
71 unblocked attempts from a median of 56 feet, 73 per cent from beyond 40, 8 per cent from inside 20, and none went in.
55 points in 190 career games, 43 of them assists. 2 points in 34 games last season is a collapse from the 2 before it, and the sample is small enough that it may be nothing.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 215, and it is the whole case. 50 penalty minutes in 13 minutes a night is one of the higher rates in this book.
He clears his crease, finishes checks, and defends the front of his net properly. The skating is heavy but not disqualifying.
The Intangibles
50.9 per cent of the expected goals, 62nd percentile, and 48.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 39th, across 439 minutes in Buffalo, with the goals 17-16 in his favour.
Those are the second-best chance-share figures of anybody joining San Jose this year, behind Marchment, and in the smallest sample of the group.
He is 26, a sixth-round pick, and a 6-5 right-shot defenceman who can take 15 minutes. On a club building around very light forwards, that is a specific and useful thing to own.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 439 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.9%
- 63rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.3%
- 39th 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: 17 for, 16 against. Expected: 18.2 and 17.5.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 36 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2025-26 · 34 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 49th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.76 a game
- Distance
- 1.97 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.6 mph
- 76th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
1
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 16 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 with BUF · 439 minutes at five-on-five
- Owen Power42%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- BUF took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 439 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Tuch | 47.0% | 52.9% | 53.4% |
| Owen Power | 51.9% | 50.4% | 50.3% |
| Josh Doan | 49.4% | 51.6% | 55.3% |
47.0% together, 52.9% for him apart and 53.4% for Tuch 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
71 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 0 of them goals. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.