Owen Pickering
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
Six-foot-five and 21 years old, and 96 per cent of his shot attempts came from beyond 40 feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | PIT | 25 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 6.7 | 14:49 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 25 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -5 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 6.7 | 14:49 |
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
1 goal and 2 assists in 25 games — 3 points at 14:49 a night, minus-5, with 6 penalty minutes. They were his first NHL games.
48.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 55th percentile, across 336 minutes. His ice went 9-13 against an expectation of 11.69-12.20, which on a sample that small is not evidence of anything.
The Finesse Game
15 attempts in 25 games at a median of 61 feet with 96 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet — the most extreme perimeter profile in this edition. He shoots from the blue line and nowhere else.
The skating for a man this size is the reason he was a first-round pick, and the puck movement is unfinished. He makes the simple pass and he has not yet had to make a hard one under an NHL forecheck for a full season.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 206 and still filling out. He has the reach to defend the rush without contact and the frame to clear a crease once there is more weight on it.
6 penalty minutes in 25 games. The physical game is a projection rather than a fact at this stage.
The Intangibles
Twenty-first overall in 2022 and 25 NHL games in at 21, after two full American League seasons.
He is the best defensive prospect the organisation has and the blue line ahead of him is 35, 38, 30 and 30. The path is not blocked for long.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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 has the reach to defend the rush without contact and the frame to clear a crease once there is more weight on it.”
“He makes the simple pass and he has not yet had to make a hard one under an NHL forecheck for a full season.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 336 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.9%
- 44th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 49th 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: 9 for, 13 against. Expected: 11.7 and 12.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 27 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 — 66 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 · 25 games
- Top speed
- 21.0 mph
- 23rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.12 a game
- Distance
- 2.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.5 mph
- 89th 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 · 336 minutes at five-on-five
- Kris Letang27%
- Ryan Shea20%
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
- PIT took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 336 minutes at five-on-five — 8th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kris Letang | 42.8% | 51.0% | 46.9% |
| Drew O'Connor | 49.2% | 48.8% | 49.9% |
| Michael Bunting | 40.3% | 51.6% | 52.7% |
42.8% together, 51.0% for him apart and 46.9% for Letang 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
27 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 61 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 96% from beyond forty.