Mike Matheson

A late-blooming defenceman playing the most difficult 24 minutes on a young team.

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

2015-16	FLA	3	0	0	0	+1	2	0	0	0	4	0.0	17:32
2016-17	FLA	81	7	10	17	-5	36	0	0	0	179	3.9	21:03
2017-18	FLA	81	10	17	27	-1	61	1	0	2	167	6.0	21:20
2018-19	FLA	75	8	19	27	-24	44	0	0	2	129	6.2	22:19
2019-20	FLA	59	8	12	20	-1	14	1	0	1	104	7.7	18:02
2020-21	PIT	44	5	11	16	+9	28	0	0	1	86	5.8	18:38
2021-22	PIT	74	11	20	31	+12	33	0	0	5	140	7.9	18:48
2022-23	MTL	48	8	26	34	+7	33	0	0	2	126	6.3	24:27
2023-24	MTL	82	11	51	62	-24	58	5	2	0	187	5.9	25:33
2024-25	MTL	80	6	25	31	-6	51	1	0	1	149	4.0	25:05
2025-26	MTL	78	7	30	37	+9	34	0	1	3	114	6.1	24:10
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	705	81	221	302	-23	394	8	3	17	1385	5.9	22:07

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

7 goals and 37 points in 78 games, plus-9, on 24:10 a night — the heaviest workload on the roster. He spent 65 percent of his 5-on-5 time with Dobson.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely excellent and it is the reason he can play these minutes at 32. He escapes forechecks by carrying the puck out himself, joins rushes as a fourth man, and recovers when the play turns because he is faster than most of the forwards chasing him.

He handles the puck a great deal — sometimes more than a coach would like. The turnovers that come with it are the price of a defenceman who refuses to just rim it, and on a team this young that willingness has been worth having.

The shot is decent from the point and not a weapon.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 196, and he defends with feet rather than force. He is not going to clear the front of a net against a heavy centre, and he does not initiate contact when a stick will do.

He plays enormous minutes and has been durable through them, which for a defenceman of this style is not guaranteed.

The Intangibles

He was a solid but unremarkable player for a decade and then became a genuine top-pairing defenceman in his thirties, largely because a rebuilding club gave him the minutes nobody else was ready for.

Those minutes are now being claimed by younger players. What he is over the next 2 seasons is a very good second-pairing defenceman, which is both a demotion and the correct use of him.

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

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.

durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:02 a game at five-on-five, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
39% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,485 minutes

Expected goals: 46.7%; 26th pct
Shot attempts: 46.4%; 22nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 64 for, 61 against. Expected: 61.4 and 70.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

82nd

Numbers

26th

The report ranks him 56 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 78 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 · 78 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 90th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.15 a game
Distance: 3.36 miles a game
Hardest shot: 100.6 mph; 98th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 20 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1485 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, 2025-26

The club: MTL took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.7% — 3.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,485 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Noah Dobson	45.4%	49.3%	51.4%
Nick Suzuki	49.4%	44.9%	58.1%
Cole Caufield	50.6%	44.3%	57.4%

45.4% together, 49.3% for him apart and 51.4% for Dobson 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

162 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.