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

Rickard Rakell

35 goals at a 17.2 per cent conversion and half his attempts from inside 20 feet, on ice for 30 goals against an expectation of 53.

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

2012-13	ANA	4	0	0	0	-2	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	8:57
2013-14	ANA	18	0	4	4	-3	2	0	0	0	22	0.0	11:43
2014-15	ANA	71	9	22	31	+6	10	2	0	1	105	8.6	12:34
2015-16	ANA	72	20	23	43	-1	19	4	0	7	169	11.8	16:04
2016-17	ANA	71	33	18	51	+10	12	5	0	10	177	18.6	17:23
2017-18	ANA	77	34	35	69	+6	14	8	0	3	230	14.8	19:25
2018-19	ANA	69	18	25	43	-13	27	6	0	2	194	9.3	18:28
2019-20	ANA	65	15	27	42	-5	12	3	0	2	186	8.1	18:10
2020-21	ANA	52	9	19	28	-14	12	0	0	1	144	6.3	17:50
2021-22	ANA/PIT	70	20	21	41	0	12	5	0	2	184	10.9	17:59
2022-23	PIT	82	28	32	60	-5	16	11	0	2	243	11.5	18:26
2023-24	PIT	70	15	22	37	+4	22	4	0	2	165	9.1	16:31
2024-25	PIT	81	35	35	70	-22	14	9	0	1	203	17.2	19:18
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	802	236	283	519	-39	172	57	0	33	2025	11.7	17:20

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

35 goals and 35 assists in 81 games — 70 points, a career high, at 19:18 a night, with 9 power-play goals on 203 shots. Minus-22.

51.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 67th percentile. His ice went 66-72 against an expectation of 56.66-52.57 — twenty-three goals of scoring missing, on a line whose chances were comfortably above the club average.

The Finesse Game

203 attempts at a median of 20 feet with 49 per cent from inside 20, converting at 17.2 per cent. That is a shot profile almost nobody sustains and he sustained it for a full season at 32.

35 assists says the passing is genuine and it has always been the second thing about him. He arrives in the slot without the puck and he is very difficult to account for on a line with a centre who draws two men.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 194 and light for a player who takes half his shots from the paint. He goes to the net and absorbs what comes with it rather than initiating anything.

14 penalty minutes in 81 games is among the lowest rates of any regular in this edition. He does not forecheck with force and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

Thirtieth overall in 2011 by Anaheim and traded here in 2022, and 802 games and 519 points into a career that has had two 30-goal seasons a decade apart.

He is 32 and the contract runs long. On a club that finished 29th in goals against, a 35-goal winger who is also a minus-22 is the whole problem in one line.

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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:06 a game at five-on-five, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He arrives in the slot without the puck and he is very difficult to account for on a line with a centre who draws two men.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“35 assists says the passing is genuine and it has always been the second thing about him.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck with force and he does not retaliate.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not forecheck with force and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,223 minutes

Expected goals: 51.9%; 69th pct
Shot attempts: 53%; 83rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 66 for, 72 against. Expected: 56.7 and 52.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

66th

Numbers

69th

The two rank him within 3 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 — 75 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 · 81 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 32nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.47 a game
Distance: 3.19 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.8 mph; 87th 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 · 1223 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 51.9% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,223 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sidney Crosby	53.5%	46.0%	46.3%
Bryan Rust	51.2%	52.7%	43.3%
Erik Karlsson	53.0%	50.8%	46.2%

53.5% together, 46.0% for him apart and 46.3% for Crosby 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

319 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 37 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.