This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Nick Schmaltz

Fifty-eight points in sixty-three games, and the sixth percentile in shot velocity.

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	ARI	63	22	36	58	+4	20	6	0	2	132	16.7	19:43
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	427	100	199	299	+6	102	24	0	13	701	14.3	17:07

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

22 goals and 36 assists in 63 games — 58 points at 19:43 a night, plus-4, with 6 power-play goals on 132 shots, converting at 16.67 per cent, and 20 penalty minutes.

Fifty-eight points in sixty-three games is a 75-point pace, and the plus-4 on a club that was outscored by 71 is the more remarkable half. 50.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 959 minutes, the 57th percentile; his ice went 52-45 against an expectation of 41.72-40.73.

He has now missed time in five of his seven seasons.

The Finesse Game

132 attempts at a median of 27 feet, 36 per cent from inside 20, off a shot measured at 82.8 mph — the 6th percentile in the league.

That is the whole shape of the player: 22 goals on the softest shot in the top six. He scores by arriving unmarked rather than by beating a goaltender, and 199 career assists against 100 goals says where the value really is. He is the best passer on the roster and the one man here who can find Keller in stride.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 184, and there is no physical element to the game at all — 20 penalty minutes in 63 games, 102 in 427.

The skating is genuinely good: 22.8 mph at the 79th percentile and 3.21 miles a game at the 92nd. He covers ground and he handles the puck at speed, which is why the injuries are the thing that decides the career rather than the ability.

The Intangibles

Twentieth overall in 2014 to Chicago, and he arrived here in the Dylan Strome trade five years ago, which Arizona has comfortably won.

He is 27 with 299 points in 427 games. The availability is the whole file — a 75-point pace is a top-line centre, and 63 games is not, and the club has built a first line around a man who has played a full season once.

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
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.

workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:13 a game at five-on-five, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He is the best passer on the roster and the one man here who can find Keller in stride.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“there is no physical element to the game at all”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 959 minutes

Expected goals: 50.6%; 57th pct
Shot attempts: 49.9%; 52nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 52 for, 45 against. Expected: 41.7 and 40.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

69th

Numbers

57th

The two rank him within 12 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 959 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, 2022-23

The club: ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 5.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 959 minutes at five-on-five — 54th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Clayton Keller	53.2%	29.7%	40.1%
Barrett Hayton	56.1%	43.7%	45.5%
Juuso Välimäki	55.1%	47.3%	49.8%

53.2% together, 29.7% for him apart and 40.1% for Keller 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

199 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.