Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

24

Nick Seeler

Philadelphia Flyers Defense

Two hundred and sixty-three career penalty minutes, eight career goals, and a plus-9 on a club that was outscored.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18MIN22044+1021000170.014:32
2018-19MIN71257-464001673.012:20
2019-20MIN/CHI12011-81500050.011:55
2021-22PHI43123-329000323.113:05
2022-23PHI7741014+156000844.814:29
2023-24PHI7111213+9780001001.016:57
2024-25 so far
Career29683442+52630013052.614:15

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

71 games, 1 goal and 12 assists for 13 points, 78 penalty minutes, 16:57 a night and plus-9 — the best plus-minus on the club. He took 53.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,051 minutes, the 77th percentile, and his ice went 49-45 against an expectation of 46.38-40.86.

Three goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. Thirteen points is a career high in a sixth NHL season.

The Finesse Game

148 attempts at a median of 57 feet with 80 per cent of them from beyond forty and 5 per cent from inside twenty, 100 of those on goal, converted at 1.0 per cent against a career 2.62 across 305 shots.

Eight career goals in 296 games and 34 assists. A 57-foot median with four-fifths of the attempts from beyond forty feet is a defenceman who shoots to create a rebound and nothing else; the puck leaves his stick to the nearest white sweater and the ambition ends there.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 197 and took 78 penalty minutes.

263 career penalty minutes in 296 games. He blocks shots at a rate that hurts, finishes every check he can reach and clears his crease by putting people on the ice; on a club with the fourth-best penalty kill in the league that is most of what he is for.

The Intangibles

131st overall in 2011 by Minnesota, six seasons, three organisations, 42 points in 296 games and a career plus-5.

A fifth-round pick who reached the NHL six years after his draft and has taken seventeen minutes a night at 30. The plus-9 on a club that was outscored at five-on-five by twenty-one goals is the number to take away.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,051 minutes

Expected goals
53.2%
77th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.7%
70th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 45 against. Expected: 46.4 and 40.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
22nd
Numbers
77th

The numbers rank him 55 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 437 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1051 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, 2023-24

The club
PHI took 52.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.2% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,051 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sean Walker54.0%51.6%51.9%
Travis Konecny58.7%50.8%51.6%
Joel Farabee52.2%53.6%51.7%

54.0% together, 51.6% for him apart and 51.9% for Walker apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

148 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.