This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ryan McLeod
Buffalo Sabres Center
20 goals on 97 shots — 20.6 per cent — after scoring 12 in his best previous season.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | EDM | 10 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 12:47 |
| 2021-22 | EDM | 71 | 9 | 12 | 21 | -2 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 82 | 11.0 | 12:46 |
| 2022-23 | EDM | 57 | 11 | 12 | 23 | +4 | 18 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 78 | 14.1 | 14:11 |
| 2023-24 | EDM | 81 | 12 | 18 | 30 | +10 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 106 | 11.3 | 14:15 |
| 2024-25 | BUF | 79 | 20 | 33 | 53 | +13 | 16 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 97 | 20.6 | 16:50 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 298 | 52 | 76 | 128 | +23 | 56 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 366 | 14.2 | 14:31 |
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
20 goals and 33 assists in 79 games for 53 points, plus-13, on 16:50 a night with 3 shorthanded goals — a career high by 23 points.
20.6 per cent shooting on 97 shots. His career rate before this was under 10. The chance share was 47.1 per cent, the 21st percentile, and his on-ice goals were 51-46 against an expected 39-44: 16 goals more than the chances warranted at one end and 10 more at the other.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the tool and it is genuinely high-end — he is among the faster centres in the league and he uses it to arrive first on a forecheck and to recover on a backcheck. 3 shorthanded goals is what that speed buys.
The shot is not a weapon. 97 shots in 79 games is very low volume and the release is ordinary; 43 per cent of the attempts come from inside 20, which supports a rate above his career mark but nothing like 20 per cent. 33 assists is the more believable half of the season.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 204, and he plays lighter than that. He is not a forechecking force and does not win pucks below the goal line the way the frame suggests he should.
16 penalty minutes across 79 games. The durability has been good.
The Intangibles
Acquired from Edmonton for a first-round pick and a prospect, in a trade that looked expensive and then looked like theft.
The honest reading is that neither verdict is right. He is a good third-line centre with real speed who converted at twice his rate for one season. 53 points will not repeat; 35 and excellent defensive play is a perfectly useful player, and it is what the club is paying for.
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
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is not a forechecking force and does not win pucks below the goal line the way the frame suggests he should.”
“does not win pucks below the goal line the way the frame suggests he should”
“35 and excellent defensive play is a perfectly useful player, and it is what the club is paying for.”
“3 shorthanded goals is what that speed buys.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,000 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.1%
- 27th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.7%
- 40th 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: 51 for, 46 against. Expected: 39.0 and 43.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 39 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 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 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 82nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.59 a game
- Distance
- 3.06 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.0 mph
- 28th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 · 1000 minutes at five-on-five
- Jason Zucker31%
- Jack Quinn22%
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
- BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.1% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,000 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owen Power | 46.5% | 47.4% | 47.4% |
| Bowen Byram | 47.5% | 46.8% | 49.2% |
| Jason Zucker | 48.9% | 46.2% | 48.5% |
46.5% together, 47.4% for him apart and 47.4% for Power apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
150 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.