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

Nick Schmaltz

63 points and a minus-15, and the ice he was on scored 26 goals against an expectation of 50.

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	ARI	79	22	39	61	-16	10	10	1	3	158	13.9	19:11
2024-25	UTA	82	20	43	63	-15	14	9	0	3	186	10.8	18:35
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	588	142	281	423	-25	126	43	1	19	1045	13.6	17:36

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

20 goals and 43 assists in 82 games — 63 points at 18:35 a night, minus-15, with 9 power-play goals on 186 shots and only 14 penalty minutes.

52.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 77th percentile. His ice went 26-37 against an expectation of 50.00-44.88. Twenty-four goals of scoring did not arrive, on a line that was creating at a rate almost nobody in the league matched.

The Finesse Game

186 attempts at a median of 25 feet with 37 per cent from inside 20, converting at 10.8 per cent.

43 assists says what he is. He is a carrier and a distributor who holds the puck through the neutral zone and finds the late man, and he has thrown forty or more assists in three of the last four seasons.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 184 and light. He does not forecheck with force, he does not win pucks on the wall, and he is not used against a first line.

14 penalty minutes in 82 games is among the lowest totals of any regular in this edition. He is entirely out of the physical half of the game.

The Intangibles

Twentieth overall in 2014 by Chicago, traded to Arizona at 22 for a package that has aged extremely well for the club that received him — 588 games and 423 points.

He is 29. He has missed substantial time in three seasons to injury and last year he played all 82 for the first time in his career.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,113 minutes

Expected goals: 52.7%; 77th pct
Shot attempts: 52.8%; 81st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 37 against. Expected: 50.0 and 44.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

66th

Numbers

77th

The two rank him within 11 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 — 75 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

2024-25 · 1113 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: UTA took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.7% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,113 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Clayton Keller	53.3%	50.8%	48.6%
Barrett Hayton	56.7%	48.6%	59.3%
Mikhail Sergachev	53.8%	51.9%	51.4%

53.3% together, 50.8% for him apart and 48.6% 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

265 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.