This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Ryan O'Reilly

The 15th-best penalty differential of 393 forwards, at 31, on the 87th-percentile penalty-kill workload.

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

2009-10	COL	81	8	18	26	+4	18	0	2	2	135	5.9	16:46
2010-11	COL	74	13	13	26	-7	16	2	1	0	119	10.9	16:03
2011-12	COL	81	18	37	55	-1	12	4	0	3	189	9.5	19:32
2012-13	COL	29	6	14	20	-3	4	3	0	0	66	9.1	18:30
2013-14	COL	80	28	36	64	-1	2	9	0	6	201	13.9	19:49
2014-15	COL	82	17	38	55	-5	12	2	1	1	171	9.9	19:43
2015-16	BUF	71	21	39	60	-16	8	8	1	2	157	13.4	21:44
2016-17	BUF	72	20	35	55	-1	10	8	1	3	189	10.6	21:28
2017-18	BUF	81	24	37	61	-23	2	15	0	3	230	10.4	20:49
2018-19	STL	82	28	49	77	+22	12	6	1	5	234	12.0	20:46
2019-20	STL	71	12	49	61	+11	10	2	1	3	118	10.2	20:34
2020-21	STL	56	24	30	54	+26	18	4	2	4	129	18.6	20:45
2021-22	STL	78	21	37	58	+11	12	9	0	0	168	12.5	19:05
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	938	240	432	672	+17	136	72	10	32	2106	11.4	19:40

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

78 games, 21 goals and 37 assists at 19:05 a night, plus-11, twelve penalty minutes, 168 shots. Nine of the twenty-one came on the power play. Thirty-third overall in 2009 by Colorado — the second round — thirteen seasons, 938 games, 672 points.

The Finesse Game

19:05 a night is the 88th percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, and it is the largest forward workload on the club.

He starts more shifts in his own end than in the attacking one — 390 against 305 — and the club put him there on purpose.

43.9 per cent offensive-zone starts is the 147th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and he came out at 49.1 per cent of the expected goals and 49.2 per cent of the attempts — both a shade under even, and both better than the club’s own 46.9 per cent.

6.77 shots per 60 is the 40th percentile at 12.5 per cent, from a 21-foot median with sixty per cent of them from the slot at the 80th.

2.02 takeaways per 60 is the 76th percentile against 1.05 giveaways at the 19th. Twice as many won as lost is the ratio of a man who does not turn the puck over.

The Physical Game

0.24 penalties taken per 60 is the 6th percentile and the net of plus-0.77 is the 15th-best of all 393 forwards.

Twelve penalty minutes in seventy-eight games. At 19:05 a night, on the penalty kill, that is remarkable and it is the most reliable thing in the file.

0.81 hits per 60 is the 4th percentile at 6-1 and 207 pounds — he takes the puck rather than the man.

The Intangibles

1:52 a night short-handed is the 87th percentile among forwards, on a club that finished 7th in the league in expected goals against per 60 on the kill.

22.6 mph is the 56th percentile and 9.37 miles per 60 the 27th, against 3.2 bursts per 60 at the 22nd. Nothing about the skating is above average and the deployment is.

He is 31, with 672 points in 938 games across thirteen seasons — a career rate of 0.72 a game, and fifty-eight in seventy-eight is 0.74. This is not decline; it is exactly his own level, held into a thirteenth year. The chair, the discipline, the kill and a takeaway ledger twice as good as his giveaways are four things a contender pays for, and none of them is the scoring.

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.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
4 of his 21 goals late or in overtime, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
disciplined· stays out of the box
0.15 penalty minutes a game over 78, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“1:52 a night short-handed is the 87th percentile among forwards, on a club that finished 7th in the league in expected goals against per 60 on the kill.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He starts more shifts in his own end than in the attacking one — 390 against 305 — and the club put him there on purpose.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,090 minutes

Expected goals: 49.1%; 49th pct
Shot attempts: 49.2%; 48th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 37 against. Expected: 41.0 and 42.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

84th

Numbers

49th

The report ranks him 35 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 — 69 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 · 78 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 70th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.01 a game
Distance: 2.98 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 63rd 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

2021-22 · 1090 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: STL took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,090 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
David Perron	50.0%	47.8%	48.5%
Brandon Saad	48.9%	49.4%	44.6%
Colton Parayko	44.5%	53.6%	47.8%

50.0% together, 47.8% for him apart and 48.5% for Perron 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

215 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 23 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.