Pierre-Olivier Joseph

No goals in 47 games across two clubs, and a minus-22 from a seventh defenceman.

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

2020-21	PIT	16	1	4	5	+1	6	0	0	0	27	3.7	16:47
2021-22	PIT	4	0	0	0	-2	2	0	0	0	7	0.0	18:14
2022-23	PIT	75	5	16	21	+8	44	1	0	1	108	4.6	15:15
2023-24	PIT	52	2	9	11	-3	14	0	0	1	42	4.8	15:05
2024-25	STL/PIT	47	0	3	3	-22	45	0	0	0	42	0.0	15:16
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	194	8	32	40	-18	111	1	0	2	226	3.5	15:24

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

No goals and 3 assists in 47 games across St. Louis and Pittsburgh — 3 points at 15:16 a night, minus-22, with 45 penalty minutes.

Three points and a minus-22 in 47 games is a difficult line to read charitably. He was waived, claimed and moved during the season, which is the market’s own assessment.

The Finesse Game

42 attempts and no goals in 47 games. 40 points in 194 career NHL games.

3 assists. The skating is the asset — he escapes a forecheck by turning away from it and he can carry the puck — and the decisions with it have never been reliable enough for a regular job.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 185 and light for the position. He does not clear the front of his own net and he does not finish checks.

45 penalty minutes in 47 games is a high rate for a defenceman who is not physical, and most of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step.

The Intangibles

Twenty-third overall in 2017 by Arizona and traded to Pittsburgh in the Phil Kessel deal — 194 games and 40 points across three organisations.

He is 26 and Vancouver signed him in the summer. A left-shot seventh defenceman who can skate is a useful thing to have and this one has never held a job for a full season.

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
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.

transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The skating is the asset — he escapes a forecheck by turning away from it and he can carry the puck — and the decisions with it have never been reliable enough for a regular job.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear the front of his own net and he does not finish checks.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He does not clear the front of his own net and he does not finish checks.”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**45 penalty minutes in 47 games** is a high rate for a defenceman who is not physical, and most of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 659 minutes

Expected goals: 48%; 35th pct
Shot attempts: 51.2%; 67th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 15 for, 38 against. Expected: 23.7 and 25.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

7th

Numbers

35th

The numbers rank him 28 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 — 62 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 · 47 games

Top speed: 22.3 mph; 73rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.70 a game
Distance: 2.16 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.2 mph; 36th 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 with PIT · 375 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: PIT took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.0% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
The role: 659 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Kris Letang	52.6%	46.9%	46.0%
Matthew Kessel	48.7%	47.9%	52.5%
Anthony Beauvillier	55.4%	46.8%	50.9%

52.6% together, 46.9% for him apart and 46.0% for Letang 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

61 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 0 of them goals. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.