Nikolas Matinpalo
Ottawa Senators Defense
Undrafted, no goals in 95 games, and the 15th percentile in possession.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | OTT | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 7:00 |
| 2024-25 | OTT | 41 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -2 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 2.3 | 12:37 |
| 2025-26 | OTT | 50 | 0 | 5 | 5 | -1 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 0.0 | 15:38 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 95 | 1 | 8 | 9 | -2 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 1.2 | 13:58 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
No goals and 5 assists in 50 games, minus-1, at 15:38 a night with 16 penalty minutes.
The Finesse Game
59 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, 8 per cent from inside 20, and none went in. 1 goal in 95 career games.
5 assists in 50 games. He makes the short pass and defends, and the club is not asking for anything else.
The Physical Game
6-3, 213, and he is willing in front of his own net. 16 penalty minutes in 50 games.
The skating is adequate for a third pair and it is the ceiling on everything.
The Intangibles
An odd split: 51.0 per cent of the expected goals, 63rd percentile, against only 45.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 15th percentile, across 712 minutes.
That is a defenceman whose pair concedes a great deal of puck and very little danger — which is either the Ottawa structure working around him, or him doing the specific thing this club is best at. The goals went 22-28 against, which is the goaltending.
He is 28, undrafted out of Finland, and reached the NHL at 26. 95 games out of that is a good outcome and this is a sixth-defenceman page.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 712 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51%
- 64th pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.7%
- 17th 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: 22 for, 28 against. Expected: 27.1 and 26.0.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 56 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2025-26 · 50 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 95th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.88 a game
- Distance
- 2.12 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.8 mph
- 65th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
1
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 15 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 712 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Kleven23%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- OTT took 54.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.0% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 712 minutes at five-on-five — 31st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fabian Zetterlund | 55.6% | 49.1% | 54.6% |
| Nick Jensen | 51.4% | 50.8% | 52.8% |
| Drake Batherson | 54.2% | 49.5% | 56.9% |
55.6% together, 49.1% for him apart and 54.6% for Zetterlund apart. He was worse away from Zetterlund, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Zetterlund did.
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
59 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 0 of them goals. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.