This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Olen Zellweger
Anaheim Ducks Defense
5-10, 22 years old, 20 points in 62 games, and the most divisive young defenceman in the organisation.
| 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 | ANA | 62 | 7 | 13 | 20 | +1 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 130 | 5.4 | 18:58 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 88 | 9 | 20 | 29 | -5 | 24 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 164 | 5.5 | 19:04 |
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
7 goals and 13 assists in 62 games for 20 points, plus-1, on 18:58 a night.
47.5 per cent at five-on-five, the 30th percentile. His on-ice goals were 38-32 against an expected 40-44, so the results were bad and the chances underneath them were worse.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the best on the blue line and possibly in the organisation — he escapes pressure by changing direction rather than out-running it, and he can carry a puck out of trouble from a standing start.
The offensive instincts are real: 130 shots in 62 games is a high rate for a defenceman, and he walks the line rather than firing into a shin pad. What has not translated is turning that into points — 20 in 62 is below what a defenceman of this profile should manage even on a bad club.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 193, and it is the whole problem. He cannot defend the front of his own net, he loses board battles to men who are simply bigger, and against a heavy forecheck the puck goes in behind him.
20 penalty minutes over 62 games. He is not compensating with his stick, which is to his credit and means the failures are clean and visible.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick with a junior scoring record and two seasons of NHL work that have not gone especially well. The organisation has moved him up and down the lineup repeatedly.
The uncomfortable comparison is to the small defencemen who have made this work, all of whom had one thing he does not yet: a partner and a system that hides the size. Anaheim has neither. He is 22 and the next two seasons decide it.
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.
“he escapes pressure by changing direction rather than out-running it, and he can carry a puck out of trouble from a standing start”
“He cannot defend the front of his own net”
“he loses board battles to men who are simply bigger”
“He is not compensating with his stick, which is to his credit and means the failures are clean and visible.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 958 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.5%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.6%
- 39th 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: 38 for, 32 against. Expected: 40.1 and 44.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 — 69 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, 2024-25 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.37 a game
- Distance
- 2.92 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.2 mph
- 40th 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 89.7
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
2024-25 · 958 minutes at five-on-five
- Jacob Trouba33%
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
- ANA took 44.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.5% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 958 minutes at five-on-five — 55th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jacob Trouba | 47.2% | 47.6% | 43.4% |
| Alex Killorn | 52.5% | 45.1% | 45.5% |
| Leo Carlsson | 45.5% | 48.3% | 44.1% |
47.2% together, 47.6% for him apart and 43.4% for Trouba apart. Trouba was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Trouba 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
193 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.