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

Olen Zellweger

Five foot ten, and nineteen minutes a night in his first twenty-six NHL games.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2023-24	ANA	26	2	7	9	-6	4	0	0	0	34	5.9	19:17
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	26	2	7	9	-6	4	0	0	0	34	5.9	19:17

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

2 goals and 7 assists in 26 games at 19:17 a night — minus-6, on 34 shots with 4 penalty minutes.

Nineteen minutes a night in a first call-up is the number. A club does not hand that to a twenty-year-old defenceman it is not serious about.

43.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 434 minutes, the 13th percentile. His ice went 11-20 against an expectation of 15.43-19.98 — two fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

34 attempts at a median of 43 feet, with 57 per cent from beyond 40 and 11 per cent from inside 20.

The skating is the whole player and it is genuinely high-end — he escapes a forecheck by turning away from it rather than by beating it to the boards, and the first three strides out of his own zone are the fastest on this blue line. He carries the puck out under control and gains the line with it, and the seven assists in twenty-six games are the product.

He walks the line and holds the puck until the killing box commits. This is a power-play defenceman who has not yet been given a power play.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 193, and he is the smallest defenceman in this chapter. He cannot clear his crease, he will not win a battle in the corner against a heavy forward, and the defending is done with feet and stick rather than with the body.

4 penalty minutes in 26 games. He does not foul, because he is rarely beaten to a place where fouling is the only option left.

The size is the whole question and it is not settled by 26 games. A 5-10 defenceman survives at this level by never being in the wrong place, and the margin for the error is smaller for him than for anybody else on this roster.

The Intangibles

Thirty-fourth overall in 2021, out of Everett, and a defenceman whose junior numbers said he would either be a top-four man or nothing at all.

He is 21. Nineteen minutes a night at 5-10 in a first season is the most interesting single fact on this blue line, and the next two years decide whether the feet are enough.

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.

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.

transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**He carries the puck out under control and gains the line with it**, and the seven assists in twenty-six games are the product.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He walks the line and holds the puck until the killing box commits.** This is a power-play defenceman who has not yet been given a power play.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He cannot clear his crease, he will not win a battle in the corner against a heavy forward, and the defending is done with feet and stick rather than with the body.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He cannot clear his crease, he will not win a battle in the corner against a heavy forward, and the defending is done with feet and stick rather than with the body.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“**5-10 and 193, and he is the smallest defenceman in this chapter.**”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“He does not foul, because he is rarely beaten to a place where fouling is the only option left.”
defends-with-reachhe lacks it· takes the puck before the contact happens
“**5-10 and 193, and he is the smallest defenceman in this chapter.** He cannot clear his crease, he will not win a battle in the corner against a heavy forward, and the defending is done with feet and stick rather than with the body.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 434 minutes

Expected goals: 43.6%; 13th pct
Shot attempts: 46.5%; 25th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 11 for, 20 against. Expected: 15.4 and 20.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

39th

Numbers

13th

The report ranks him 26 points above where the numbers do. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2023-24 · 26 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 68th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.77 a game
Distance: 2.90 miles a game
Hardest shot: 83.3 mph; 14th pct

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

2023-24 · 434 minutes at five-on-five

Cam Fowler78%

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: ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.6% — 2.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: 434 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cam Fowler	43.9%	42.5%	44.8%
Troy Terry	44.3%	43.0%	47.8%
Alex Killorn	54.7%	37.1%	46.3%

43.9% together, 42.5% for him apart and 44.8% for Fowler 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

54 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 57% from beyond forty.