This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Schmaltz
Arizona Coyotes Center
Fifty-nine points in 63 games at 2.96 even-strength points per 60, the 95th percentile — off an 18.7 per cent shooting year nobody should expect twice.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CHI | 61 | 6 | 22 | 28 | +10 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 9.1 | 13:16 |
| 2017-18 | CHI | 78 | 21 | 31 | 52 | +1 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 118 | 17.8 | 18:14 |
| 2018-19 | CHI/ARI | 40 | 7 | 18 | 25 | -12 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 62 | 11.3 | 17:49 |
| 2019-20 | ARI | 70 | 11 | 34 | 45 | +3 | 20 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 95 | 11.6 | 15:32 |
| 2020-21 | ARI | 52 | 10 | 22 | 32 | -1 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 105 | 9.5 | 17:03 |
| 2021-22 | ARI | 63 | 23 | 36 | 59 | +1 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 123 | 18.7 | 18:15 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 364 | 78 | 163 | 241 | +2 | 82 | 18 | 0 | 11 | 569 | 13.7 | 16:40 |
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
23 goals and 36 assists in 63 games — 59 points at 18:15 a night, plus-1, with 4 power-play goals on 123 shots, converting at 18.7 per cent, and 14 penalty minutes.
2.96 even-strength points per 60 is the 95th percentile among the league’s forwards. On the club with the fewest goals in hockey, that is the most surprising line in this book.
46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 920 minutes, the 25th percentile. His ice went 52-54 against an expectation of 36.45-41.28 — sixteen goals of scoring above what the chances predicted and thirteen more conceded than they did, which on this club is the shooting and the goaltending rather than the centre.
18.7 per cent shooting is the 95th percentile and 6.42 shots per 60 is the 33rd. Twenty-three goals off 123 attempts is a rate that does not repeat, and the assists are the part of the season that should.
Away from Dysin Mayo his chance share was 49.7 per cent; with him, 40.2. Beside Clayton Keller, 48.1 across 909 attempts.
The Finesse Game
36 assists in 63 games and 163 in 364 career games. He is a passer first and always has been, and the hands are genuinely high-end — the reason Chicago took him twentieth overall and the reason he survived being traded at twenty-two.
2.71 takeaways per 60 is the 97th percentile among forwards, level with Clayton Keller for the highest figure on the roster. The two of them are how this club got the puck.
123 attempts at a median of 25 feet at 92.0 mph, the 64th percentile of velocity. The release is ordinary; the timing is not.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 184, and 0.78 hits per 60 is the 4th percentile among forwards with 1.46 blocks at the 38th. There is nothing here and there has never been.
He also draws almost nothing — 0.47 penalties per 60, the 15th percentile — which for a puck-carrier is unusual and is not a compliment. He avoids contact rather than absorbing it, and a man who is never fouled is often a man who has already given the puck up.
Top speed 23.0 mph, the 83rd percentile, at 9.62 miles per sixty, the 47th. Quick, ordinary engine.
The Intangibles
Twentieth overall in 2014 by Chicago, traded to Arizona at twenty-two in the Dylan Strome deal, and 241 points in 364 games since.
He is 26, signed long-term, and this was the best season of his career by a distance. The question is what part of it survives a shooting percentage falling back seven points, and the answer — 36 assists and the 97th percentile in takeaways — is more encouraging than the goal total suggests. What he cannot do is defend, and on a club conceding 313 goals that matters more than it would anywhere else.
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
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
46.9% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 41.5% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.4, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“He is a passer first and always has been, and the hands are genuinely high-end”
“2.71 takeaways per 60 is the 97th percentile among forwards”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 920 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.7%
- 19th 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: 52 for, 54 against. Expected: 36.5 and 41.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 17 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 — 60 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 · 63 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 89th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.06 a game
- Distance
- 2.92 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.0 mph
- 76th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 920 minutes at five-on-five
- Travis Boyd48%
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
- ARI took 42.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 4.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 920 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clayton Keller | 48.1% | 45.2% | 44.0% |
| Travis Boyd | 45.0% | 48.5% | 41.7% |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 45.9% | 47.6% | 41.4% |
48.1% together, 45.2% for him apart and 44.0% for Keller apart. Keller was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Keller 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
161 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 23 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.