This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Rasmus Ristolainen
Philadelphia Flyers Defense
The 9th-most hits of 202 defencemen and the 8th-hardest shot of 192, on the 3rd-least ground covered.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | BUF | 34 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -15 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 3.9 | 19:07 |
| 2014-15 | BUF | 78 | 8 | 12 | 20 | -32 | 26 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 121 | 6.6 | 20:37 |
| 2015-16 | BUF | 82 | 9 | 32 | 41 | -21 | 33 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 202 | 4.5 | 25:17 |
| 2016-17 | BUF | 79 | 6 | 39 | 45 | -9 | 58 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 186 | 3.2 | 26:28 |
| 2017-18 | BUF | 73 | 6 | 35 | 41 | -25 | 48 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 182 | 3.3 | 26:30 |
| 2018-19 | BUF | 78 | 5 | 38 | 43 | -41 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 182 | 2.8 | 24:38 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 69 | 6 | 27 | 33 | -2 | 46 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 128 | 4.7 | 22:48 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 49 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -18 | 36 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 5.5 | 22:17 |
| 2021-22 | PHI | 66 | 2 | 14 | 16 | -9 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 97 | 2.1 | 21:26 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 608 | 48 | 213 | 261 | -172 | 329 | 14 | 0 | 6 | 1223 | 3.9 | 23:37 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
66 games, 2 goals and 14 assists at 21:26 a night, minus-9, thirty-eight penalty minutes, 97 shots. Eighth overall in 2013, nine seasons, 608 games, 261 points, and a career minus-172 across clubs that finished where these clubs finished.
The Finesse Game
0.72 even-strength points per 60 is the 25th percentile and two goals from ninety-seven shots is a 2.1 per cent shooting rate, the 23rd-lowest of the 202.
The shot itself is not the problem. 101.4 mph is the 8th-hardest of the 192 defencemen the tracking measures, and twenty-one per cent of his attempts came from the slot, the 95th percentile.
0.51 takeaways per 60 is the 10th percentile. 46.5 per cent of the expected goals and 46.0 per cent of the attempts, out of 44.0 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 151st-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
The 1,914 five-on-five attempts he shared with Travis Sanheim are the largest pairing on the roster, and together they took 47.5 per cent of the expected goals. Apart from Sanheim he is a 42.9 per cent player across 451 attempts; Sanheim apart from him is 49.8 across 1,056. The pair is carried, and it is not close enough to argue about.
The Physical Game
9.75 hits per 60 is the 9th-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-4 and 208 pounds.
Twenty-one per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 95th percentile among defencemen, and 5.30 blocks per 60 is the 80th.
0.55 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.81 taken, thirty-eight penalty minutes in sixty-six games.
The Intangibles
7.83 miles per 60 is the 3rd-least of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, against a 21.4 mph top speed at the 22nd percentile and 0.8 bursts per 60 at the 22nd. Three skating measurements in the bottom quarter of the position, and the ground covered is close to the floor of it.
He is 27 and has three seasons of forty points behind him in Buffalo, all of them on clubs that lost. The hits, the shot speed and the slot share are genuine top-of-the-position figures, and the skating, the takeaways and the possession share away from Sanheim are the reason a nine-year career has never once been on a winning team.
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
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
20.9% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“9.75 hits per 60 is the 9th-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-4 and 208 pounds.”
“Twenty-one per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 95th percentile among defencemen, and 5.30 blocks per 60 is the 80th.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,224 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.5%
- 27th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46%
- 21st 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: 54 for, 57 against. Expected: 50.0 and 57.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 26 points above where the numbers do. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2021-22 · 66 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 43rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.30 a game
- Distance
- 2.80 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 101.4 mph
- 98th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 · 1224 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, 2021-22
- The club
- PHI took 46.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.5% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,224 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travis Sanheim | 47.5% | 42.9% | 49.8% |
| Cam Atkinson | 49.2% | 45.4% | 41.6% |
| Travis Konecny | 46.2% | 46.7% | 50.1% |
47.5% together, 42.9% for him apart and 49.8% for Sanheim apart. He was worse away from Sanheim, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Sanheim did.
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
134 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.