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

Ondrej Palat

28 points at 34 on a 15.6 per cent rate, in the fourth year of a contract that has not worked.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2012-13	TBL	14	2	2	4	+5	0	0	0	1	16	12.5	11:44
2013-14	TBL	81	23	36	59	+32	20	3	2	3	165	13.9	18:02
2014-15	TBL	75	16	47	63	+31	24	3	1	5	139	11.5	17:26
2015-16	TBL	62	16	24	40	+10	20	1	2	4	117	13.7	17:55
2016-17	TBL	75	17	35	52	+8	39	5	0	3	162	10.5	19:07
2017-18	TBL	56	11	24	35	+16	6	4	1	0	109	10.1	17:00
2018-19	TBL	64	8	26	34	+4	20	2	0	1	100	8.0	14:53
2019-20	TBL	69	17	24	41	+25	22	4	1	2	128	13.3	16:11
2020-21	TBL	55	15	31	46	+1	26	7	0	6	111	13.5	17:27
2021-22	TBL	77	18	31	49	+15	20	1	0	5	143	12.6	16:30
2022-23	NJD	49	8	15	23	+5	6	1	0	1	79	10.1	15:32
2023-24	NJD	71	11	20	31	-9	37	1	0	0	108	10.2	15:39
2024-25	NJD	77	15	13	28	-5	12	2	1	3	96	15.6	13:45
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	825	177	328	505	+138	252	34	8	34	1473	12.0	16:33

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

15 goals and 13 assists in 77 games for 28 points, minus-5, on 13:45 a night with a shorthanded goal.

48.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 43rd percentile. 96 shots in 77 games is a very low volume and 15.6 per cent conversion is above his career rate.

The Finesse Game

The hockey sense is what remains and it is still good. He arrives in the right place, makes the simple play quickly, and is trusted defensively in every situation.

96 shots and 13 assists is not enough production for a top-nine forward, and the skating has thinned to the point where he no longer separates from anybody. 41 per cent of his attempts come from inside 20 feet, so the locations are right and the volume is not.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 194, and he is willing without being heavy. He forechecks honestly and goes to the net front on the power play.

12 penalty minutes over 77 games. The durability has been fine here after a run of interrupted seasons in Tampa.

The Intangibles

Two Cups, a decade in Tampa as the least-discussed member of a great forward group, and a five-year free-agent contract signed at 31.

At 34 the projection is 25 points and reliable defensive work. The contract has one of the largest gaps between price and production on any roster in this edition.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.16 penalty minutes a game over 77, 10th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He arrives in the right place, makes the simple play quickly, and is trusted defensively in every situation.”
forechecks-aggressivelypresent and ordinary· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks honestly and goes to the net front on the power play.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“goes to the net front on the power play”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6 feet and 194, and he is willing without being heavy.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 918 minutes

Expected goals: 48.9%; 44th pct
Shot attempts: 48.9%; 42nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 41 against. Expected: 38.5 and 40.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

44th

The two rank him within 16 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 — 74 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: 22.2 mph; 47th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.60 a game
Distance: 2.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.4 mph; 48th 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 · 918 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: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 918 minutes at five-on-five — 48th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jack Hughes	53.3%	39.1%	63.0%
Jesper Bratt	52.8%	41.3%	51.6%
Brenden Dillon	47.5%	49.8%	50.7%

53.3% together, 39.1% for him apart and 63.0% for Hughes apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Hughes and did not follow 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

147 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.