This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Olli Maatta
Detroit Red Wings Defense
Two Stanley Cups, ten seasons, and 0.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | PIT | 78 | 9 | 20 | 29 | +8 | 14 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 119 | 7.6 | 18:30 |
| 2014-15 | PIT | 20 | 1 | 8 | 9 | +1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 3.7 | 20:43 |
| 2015-16 | PIT | 67 | 6 | 13 | 19 | +27 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 95 | 6.3 | 19:58 |
| 2016-17 | PIT | 55 | 1 | 6 | 7 | +17 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 1.5 | 18:04 |
| 2017-18 | PIT | 82 | 7 | 22 | 29 | -1 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 164 | 4.3 | 18:45 |
| 2018-19 | PIT | 60 | 1 | 13 | 14 | +9 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 74 | 1.4 | 18:35 |
| 2019-20 | CHI | 65 | 4 | 13 | 17 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 80 | 5.0 | 18:25 |
| 2020-21 | LAK | 41 | 0 | 4 | 4 | -8 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 0.0 | 16:26 |
| 2021-22 | LAK | 66 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +17 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 61 | 1.6 | 18:17 |
| 2022-23 | DET | 78 | 6 | 17 | 23 | -9 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 9.7 | 18:42 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 612 | 36 | 123 | 159 | +61 | 148 | 4 | 1 | 7 | 791 | 4.5 | 18:35 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
6 goals and 17 assists in 78 games, minus-9, 18:42 a night — 23 points, his most since 2017-18.
45.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,298 minutes, the 23rd percentile, with his ice at 41-57 against an expectation of 43.13-51.90. Two short at the offensive end and five worse at the defensive one.
Ten seasons, 612 games, 159 points, and two Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh.
The Finesse Game
62 shots at a median of 52 feet, 78 per cent from beyond forty and 7 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 45 shots on goal, two goals, 4.44 per cent — above the league rate. Inside forty: 14 shots, three goals, 21.43 per cent.
Sixty-two shots in 78 games is very low volume, and half his goals came from the fourteen attempts he took inside forty feet. The pattern this book keeps finding, on the smallest sample yet.
94.6 mph at the 76th percentile — the sixth Detroit defenceman in this chapter with an above-average registered shot.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 207. 21.6 mph at the 18th percentile and 0.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game at the 5th — among the slowest defencemen in the league by both measures.
2.72 miles a game at the 63rd percentile. He covers ordinary ground and never at speed.
14 penalty minutes in 78 games is a strikingly low figure for a defenceman playing nineteen minutes. He does not chase, does not hook and does not get himself into positions where he has to.
That discipline is the whole method: he is slow, he knows it, and he plays a step off rather than a step behind.
The Intangibles
22nd overall in 2012 out of Jyväskylä, an NHL regular at 19, and two Cups by 22.
He has had a cancer diagnosis and shoulder surgery inside those ten seasons, and has still played 612 games.
He is 29 and Detroit signed him for one year. He is a third-pair defenceman with a Cup pedigree and a tracking line that says the legs went some time ago.
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.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.18 penalty minutes a game over 78, 6th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“he is slow, he knows it, and he plays a step off rather than a step behind”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,298 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.4%
- 23rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.4%
- 25th 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: 41 for, 57 against. Expected: 43.1 and 51.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 55 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, 2022-23 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 51st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.19 a game
- Distance
- 2.72 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.6 mph
- 68th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1298 minutes at five-on-five
- Ben Chiarot18%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- DET took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,298 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Filip Hronek | 48.4% | 43.9% | 45.1% |
| Dominik Kubalik | 49.0% | 43.9% | 44.2% |
| David Perron | 45.8% | 45.2% | 51.6% |
48.4% together, 43.9% for him apart and 45.1% for Hronek apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
88 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.