This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ryan Shea
Pittsburgh Penguins Defense
Thirty-one games at 26, eight years after his draft, and they are his entire NHL career.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | PIT | 31 | 1 | 0 | 1 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 12:37 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 31 | 1 | 0 | 1 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 12:37 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
31 games, 1 goal and no assists, 6 penalty minutes, 12:37 a night and plus-1. He took 49.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 357 minutes, the 49th percentile, and his ice went 12-13 against an expectation of 15.95-16.27.
Four goals of finishing below what the chances were worth and three of goaltending above them. A 49.5 per cent chance share in a third-pairing role at 26 is a perfectly respectable first look.
The Finesse Game
22 attempts at a median of 54 feet with 77 per cent of them from beyond forty and 5 per cent from inside twenty, 16 of those on goal, converted at 5.9 per cent.
One goal and no assists in 31 games. There is no offence here and the club is not asking for any; the puck goes to the far wall or up the boards and the shot exists to keep a forecheck honest.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 200 and took 6 penalty minutes.
Six penalty minutes in 31 games. He is an average-sized defenceman who defends by position rather than by contact and did not get caught out of it often enough to take penalties, which at 26 in a first season is the point.
The Intangibles
One hundred and twenty-first overall in 2015 by Chicago, one season, and 31 games.
He reached the NHL eight years after his draft, at 26, on his second organisation. Thirty-one games and a plus-1 is not a career yet, and at 27 there is not much time left to make it one.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
38% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He is an average-sized defenceman who defends by position rather than by contact and did not get caught out of it often enough to take penalties, which at 26 in a first season is the point.”
“There is no offence here and the club is not asking for any; the puck goes to the far wall or up the boards and the shot exists to keep a forecheck honest.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 357 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.5%
- 49th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.4%
- 39th 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: 12 for, 13 against. Expected: 15.9 and 16.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 32 points above where the report does. 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 652 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, 2023-24 · 31 games
- Top speed
- 20.5 mph
- 10th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.16 a game
- Distance
- 1.74 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.6 mph
- 38th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 357 minutes at five-on-five
- Jack St. Ivany25%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.5% — 1.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 357 minutes at five-on-five — 10th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evgeni Malkin | 54.1% | 47.1% | 53.1% |
| Lars Eller | 51.3% | 48.8% | 50.6% |
| Drew O'Connor | 51.0% | 48.9% | 50.3% |
54.1% together, 47.1% for him apart and 53.1% for Malkin apart. He was worse away from Malkin, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Malkin 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
22 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 69 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.