This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Olli Maatta

Sixteen per cent of his shot attempts from inside 20 feet — high for a defensive defenceman — and a plus-7 across two clubs.

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	DET/UTA	77	2	16	18	+7	16	0	0	0	73	2.7	19:33
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	761	42	153	195	+82	178	4	1	7	912	4.6	18:27

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

2 goals and 16 assists in 77 games across Detroit and Utah — 18 points at 19:33 a night, plus-7, with only 16 penalty minutes.

50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 60th percentile, across 1,279 minutes. His ice went 42-42 against an expectation of 49.49-47.83 — fourteen goals of scoring missing and two conceded above expectation.

The Finesse Game

73 attempts at a median of 48 feet with 64 per cent from beyond 40 and 16 per cent from inside 20, which is a high share for a defensive defenceman and says he joins the rush more than the role suggests.

16 assists. The first pass is quick and simple, and he has never been asked to carry the puck; 195 points in 761 career games is the honest offensive record.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 207 and positionally sound rather than punishing. He blocks shots, he defends the front of his own net, and he does not need to hit anybody to end a play.

16 penalty minutes in 77 games at nearly twenty minutes a night is a very low rate. He is rarely beaten badly enough to reach and he is a first-unit penalty killer.

The Intangibles

Twenty-second overall in 2012 and 761 games and 195 points across five organisations, with two Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh — the second of them at 22.

He is 31 and has had two of the more serious health scares in recent league history: a tumour removed from his neck at 21 and a shoulder that has been rebuilt twice.

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
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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
22.6% of his attempts in the slot, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots, he defends the front of his own net, and he does not need to hit anybody to end a play.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He blocks shots, he defends the front of his own net, and he does not need to hit anybody to end a play.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**16 penalty minutes in 77 games at nearly twenty minutes a night** is a very low rate. He is rarely beaten badly enough to reach and he is a first-unit penalty killer.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He is rarely beaten badly enough to reach and he is a first-unit penalty killer.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is quick and simple, and he has never been asked to carry the puck; 195 points in 761 career games is the honest offensive record.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,279 minutes

Expected goals: 50.9%; 62nd pct
Shot attempts: 51.4%; 68th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 42 against. Expected: 49.5 and 47.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

30th

Numbers

62nd

The numbers rank him 32 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 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 · 77 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 34th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.43 a game
Distance: 2.99 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.5 mph; 84th 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

2024-25 · 1173 minutes at five-on-five

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: UTA took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 2.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,279 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mikhail Sergachev	46.8%	52.7%	54.2%
Barrett Hayton	53.9%	49.8%	59.6%
Nick Schmaltz	50.1%	51.1%	55.5%

46.8% together, 52.7% for him apart and 54.2% for Sergachev apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

115 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 55 feet. 16% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.