This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ryan McDonagh
Tampa Bay Lightning Defense
Plus-43 in 82 games at 35, which was the best figure in the league.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | NYR | 40 | 1 | 8 | 9 | +16 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 27 | 3.7 | 18:44 |
| 2011-12 | NYR | 82 | 7 | 25 | 32 | +25 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 123 | 5.7 | 24:44 |
| 2012-13 | NYR | 47 | 4 | 15 | 19 | +13 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 83 | 4.8 | 24:21 |
| 2013-14 | NYR | 77 | 14 | 29 | 43 | +11 | 36 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 177 | 7.9 | 24:49 |
| 2014-15 | NYR | 71 | 8 | 25 | 33 | +23 | 26 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 148 | 5.4 | 23:08 |
| 2015-16 | NYR | 73 | 9 | 25 | 34 | +26 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 113 | 8.0 | 22:21 |
| 2016-17 | NYR | 77 | 6 | 36 | 42 | +20 | 37 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 153 | 3.9 | 24:21 |
| 2017-18 | NYR/TBL | 63 | 4 | 25 | 29 | +8 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 99 | 4.0 | 23:20 |
| 2018-19 | TBL | 82 | 9 | 37 | 46 | +38 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 128 | 7.0 | 22:05 |
| 2019-20 | TBL | 50 | 1 | 11 | 12 | +7 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 2.0 | 20:42 |
| 2020-21 | TBL | 50 | 4 | 8 | 12 | +13 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 4.7 | 21:54 |
| 2021-22 | TBL | 71 | 4 | 22 | 26 | +15 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 4.7 | 22:27 |
| 2022-23 | NSH | 71 | 2 | 18 | 20 | +12 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 78 | 2.6 | 21:32 |
| 2023-24 | NSH | 74 | 3 | 29 | 32 | +19 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 91 | 3.3 | 21:47 |
| 2024-25 | TBL | 82 | 4 | 27 | 31 | +43 | 22 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 78 | 5.1 | 20:22 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 1010 | 80 | 340 | 420 | +289 | 379 | 9 | 5 | 15 | 1518 | 5.3 | 22:34 |
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
4 goals and 27 assists in 82 games — 31 points at 20:22 a night, plus-43 — the best figure in the league — with a shorthanded goal and only 22 penalty minutes.
52.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 71st percentile, across 1,347 minutes — the most on the roster. His ice went 62-42 against an expectation of 55.04-50.07 — four goals better than expected for and eight fewer against.
The Finesse Game
78 attempts in 82 games at a median of 51 feet with 74 per cent from beyond 40 and 5 per cent from inside 20, and 4 goals. He does not shoot and he has not for a decade.
27 assists is what the breakout produces. The first pass is short, early and almost never wrong, and under a heavy forecheck he escapes rather than chipping it out.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 216 and among the most positionally sound defenders in the league. He blocks shots, he clears his own crease, and he defends the rush by standing men up at the blue line.
22 penalty minutes in 82 games at twenty minutes a night is a very low rate for a physical defenceman. He is essentially never beaten badly enough to reach.
The Intangibles
Twelfth overall in 2007, traded before he had played a game, and captain of the Rangers for four seasons — 1,010 games, 420 points, a career plus-289, and two Stanley Cups here.
He is 36. He was traded to Nashville in a salary dump in 2023 and traded back a year later, and last season he posted the best plus-minus in hockey.
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.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
36% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He blocks shots, he clears his own crease, and he defends the rush by standing men up at the blue line.”
“He blocks shots, he clears his own crease, and he defends the rush by standing men up at the blue line.”
“**22 penalty minutes in 82 games at twenty minutes a night** is a very low rate for a physical defenceman. He is essentially never beaten badly enough to reach.”
“The first pass is short, early and almost never wrong, and under a heavy forecheck he escapes rather than chipping it out.”
“Twelfth overall in 2007, traded before he had played a game, and captain of the Rangers for four seasons — **1,010 games, 420 points, a career plus-289**, and two Stanley Cups here.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,347 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.4%
- 73rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.9%
- 42nd 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: 62 for, 42 against. Expected: 55.0 and 50.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 — 76 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 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 70th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.43 a game
- Distance
- 2.71 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.6 mph
- 75th 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 · 1347 minutes at five-on-five
- Erik Cernak72%
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
- TBL took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.4% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,347 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Cernak | 51.4% | 54.9% | 48.5% |
| Brandon Hagel | 52.8% | 52.0% | 60.3% |
| Anthony Cirelli | 53.2% | 51.6% | 62.5% |
51.4% together, 54.9% for him apart and 48.5% for Cernak apart. He was better away from Cernak, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Cernak.
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
119 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.