This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Olli Maatta
Detroit Red Wings Defense
Fourteen penalty minutes in seventy-two games, eleven seasons, and two Stanley Cups nobody remembers him for.
| 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 | DET | 72 | 4 | 14 | 18 | +14 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 8.3 | 16:03 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 684 | 40 | 137 | 177 | +75 | 162 | 4 | 1 | 7 | 839 | 4.8 | 18:19 |
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
Seventy-two games, 4 goals and 14 assists, 14 penalty minutes, 16:03 a night and plus-14. He took 49.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,085 minutes, the 44th percentile, and his ice went 53-65 against an expectation of 40.78-42.52.
Twelve goals of scoring above expectation and twenty-two more against it. A plus-14 sitting on top of that is one of the strangest pairs of numbers on any roster in this edition, and the honest reading is that the even-strength ledger was much worse than the plus-minus suggests.
The Finesse Game
Forty-eight shots in 72 games at a median of 51 feet — one of the lowest shot volumes of any defenceman playing sixteen minutes a night. Four went in.
One hundred and thirty-seven assists in 684 career games. The puck goes to the nearest available option immediately and there is no second idea, which after eleven seasons is a settled decision rather than a limitation.
The Physical Game
Fourteen penalty minutes in 72 games is a very low rate for a defenceman on a club with the 28th-ranked penalty kill. He defends by position and he is almost never out of it.
He is 6-2 and 207 and takes the body when it is there, and he does not punish anybody. One hundred and sixty-two penalty minutes in 684 career games is the whole record of eleven seasons.
The Intangibles
The 22nd pick in 2012 out of Jyvaskyla, who played 78 games as a teenager in Pittsburgh and won two Stanley Cups there before he was 23. He is plus-75 across 684 games.
He has been the fourth or fifth defenceman on six clubs and has never once been the problem. That is a career and it is not the one a 22nd pick is supposed to have.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,085 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 45th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.3%
- 29th 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: 53 for, 65 against. Expected: 40.8 and 42.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 29 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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 · 1085 minutes at five-on-five
- Justin Holl15%
- Jeff Petry13%
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
- DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,085 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 49.1% | 48.7% | 45.1% |
| Alex DeBrincat | 49.3% | 48.8% | 48.2% |
| Joe Veleno | 46.7% | 49.8% | 44.9% |
49.1% together, 48.7% for him apart and 45.1% for Gostisbehere apart. Gostisbehere was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Gostisbehere 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
70 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.