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

Neal Pionk

Undrafted, 39 points in 69 games, and 86 per cent of his shot attempts from beyond 40 feet.

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

2017-18	NYR	28	1	13	14	-1	12	0	0	0	54	1.8	22:23
2018-19	NYR	73	6	20	26	-16	35	2	0	1	132	4.5	21:10
2019-20	WPG	71	6	39	45	+10	32	3	0	1	177	3.4	23:23
2020-21	WPG	54	3	29	32	+6	20	1	0	0	100	3.0	21:58
2021-22	WPG	77	3	31	34	+5	46	1	0	1	140	2.1	21:08
2022-23	WPG	82	10	23	33	-12	44	1	0	2	142	7.0	21:56
2023-24	WPG	82	5	28	33	+9	63	1	0	1	146	3.4	20:50
2024-25	WPG	69	10	29	39	+21	44	4	0	2	123	8.1	22:04
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	536	44	212	256	+22	296	13	0	8	1014	4.3	21:47

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

10 goals and 29 assists in 69 games — 39 points at 22:04 a night, plus-21, with 4 power-play goals and 2 game-winners on 123 shots, and 44 penalty minutes.

50.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 60th percentile. His ice went 53-36 against an expectation of 45.81-44.89 — eight goals better than expected for and sixteen fewer conceded, which is the goaltender again.

The Finesse Game

123 attempts at a median of 57 feet with 86 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, converting at 8.1 per cent for 10 goals. That is a genuinely good return from the point.

29 assists and 212 in 536 career games. He runs a power-play unit, the outlet pass is quick, and he will carry the puck out of his own zone rather than chip it — which is also how he loses it.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 190 and he plays a harder game than the size suggests. He finishes checks and he is not soft in front of his own net, and he does not win many battles against a 220-pound winger.

44 penalty minutes in 69 games at twenty-two a night is a moderate rate, and a share of it is the stick foul after being beaten to the outside.

The Intangibles

Undrafted out of Minnesota-Duluth, signed by the Rangers in 2017, and 536 games and 256 points in eight seasons.

He is 30. He came here in the Jacob Trouba trade and has been a top-four defenceman on a Presidents’ Trophy club, which is a long way from where an undrafted college defenceman starts.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
86.3% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
8 of 164 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.9%, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“**Undrafted out of Minnesota-Duluth**, signed by the Rangers in 2017, and **536 games and 256 points** in eight seasons.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He runs a power-play unit, the outlet pass is quick, and he will carry the puck out of his own zone rather than chip it — which is also how he loses it.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**29 assists and 212 in 536 career games.**”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**44 penalty minutes in 69 games at twenty-two a night** is a moderate rate, and a share of it is the stick foul after being beaten to the outside.”
clears-the-creasepresent and ordinary· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He finishes checks and he is not soft in front of his own net, and he does not win many battles against a 220-pound winger.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,233 minutes

Expected goals: 50.5%; 58th pct
Shot attempts: 50.9%; 63rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 36 against. Expected: 45.8 and 44.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

76th

Numbers

58th

The two rank him within 18 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 — 77 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 · 69 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 62nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.46 a game
Distance: 3.12 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.6 mph; 76th 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 · 1233 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: WPG took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,233 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dylan Samberg	55.5%	44.2%	49.9%
Mark Scheifele	50.6%	50.4%	50.9%
Kyle Connor	49.4%	51.0%	51.8%

55.5% together, 44.2% for him apart and 49.9% for Samberg apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

190 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 54 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 86% from beyond forty.