This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mike Matheson
Montreal Canadiens Defense
The 2nd-most ground covered and the 3rd-most sprints of all 192 qualified defencemen, arriving from Pittsburgh.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 417 | 49 | 89 | 138 | -9 | 218 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 809 | 6.1 | 20:14 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
11 goals and 20 assists in seventy-four games for Pittsburgh at 18:48 a night, plus-12. Twenty-third overall in 2012, seven seasons, 417 games, 138 points.
Eleven goals from a defenceman is the 88th percentile for shooting and the 83rd for volume — this is a scoring defenceman by rate, in third-pair minutes.
The Finesse Game
1.32 even-strength points per 60 is the 86th percentile of defencemen and only six per cent of his points came on the power play — Pittsburgh gave him forty-three seconds a night there. The production is even-strength and it is real.
6.04 shots per 60 is the 83rd percentile at 7.9 per cent, from a 48-foot median with thirteen per cent from the slot, on 99.4 mph — the 89th percentile.
1.85 takeaways per 60 is the 95th percentile among defencemen and 0.78 penalties drawn per 60 is the 91st — he carries it into contact and comes out with it.
53.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 81st percentile and 53.4 per cent of the attempts the 81st. Those were Pittsburgh’s minutes, and his pair figures in the file belong to that club rather than this one.
The Physical Game
4.18 hits per 60 is the 52nd percentile and 3.49 blocks the 28th. He is 6-2 and 196 and neither number is a strength.
0.78 drawn against 0.60 taken is a 91st-percentile net — he wins the officiating exchange, which for a defenceman is uncommon.
The Intangibles
9.16 miles per 60 is the 2nd-most of all 192 qualified defencemen and 5.5 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 3rd-most, at a 22.9 mph top speed in the 94th percentile. He is the most complete skating profile of any defenceman in this batch of four clubs and it is not close.
He arrives at 28 into a defence corps that lost Jeff Petry, Alexander Romanov, Brett Kulak and Kale Clague. A club whose defencemen ranked 15th, 7th and 5th percentile for ground covered has added the man who covers the second-most in the league. What the chips cannot say is whether the skating translates into defending, and Montreal conceded 319 goals without 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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“9.16 miles per 60 is the 2nd-most of all 192 qualified defencemen and 5.5 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 3rd-most, at a 22.9 mph top speed in the 94th percentile.”
“1.85 takeaways per 60 is the 95th percentile among defencemen and 0.78 penalties drawn per 60 is the 91st — he carries it into contact and comes out with it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,296 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.9%
- 81st pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.4%
- 80th 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: 63 for, 52 against. Expected: 61.8 and 52.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2021-22 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 95th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.72 a game
- Distance
- 2.87 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 99.4 mph
- 92nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 with PIT · 1296 minutes at five-on-five
- Kris Letang22%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.9% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,296 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chad Ruhwedel | 54.3% | 53.6% | 57.8% |
| Jake Guentzel | 55.8% | 53.1% | 52.4% |
| Jeff Carter | 45.4% | 57.0% | 51.8% |
54.3% together, 53.6% for him apart and 57.8% for Ruhwedel apart. Ruhwedel was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
209 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 63% from beyond forty.