Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

41

Ryker Evans

Seattle Kraken Defense

Nineteen minutes a night at 22, in the only 36 games he has played.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24SEA36189-520000442.319:11
2024-25 so far
Career36189-520000442.319:11

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

36 games, 1 goal and 8 assists for 9 points, none on the power play, 20 penalty minutes, 19:11 a night and minus-5. He took 51.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 612 minutes, the 67th percentile, and his ice went 18-19 against an expectation of 20.33-18.85.

Two goals of finishing below what the chances were worth and level at the other end. Nineteen minutes a night in a first season is a great deal of trust, and the 51.9 per cent is the second-best chance share of any defenceman on the club.

The Finesse Game

66 attempts at a median of 54 feet with 74 per cent of them from beyond forty and 8 per cent from inside twenty, 43 of those on goal, converted at 2.3 per cent.

Eight assists against one goal in 36 games. He moves the puck up the ice quickly and prefers the pass through the middle to the safe one around the wall, which is why he is on the ice for nineteen minutes and why he is minus-5.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 195 and took 20 penalty minutes.

Twenty penalty minutes in 36 games. He is not large and does not play a heavy game; he defends with feet and stick and gives up ground in front of the net that a heavier partner has to cover.

The Intangibles

Thirty-fifth overall in 2021 by Seattle, one season, and 36 games.

He is 22, he was this club’s own second-round pick, and he played nineteen minutes a night the moment he arrived. That is the shortest route to a top-four job anybody on this roster has taken.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 612 minutes

Expected goals
51.9%
67th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.4%
87th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 18 for, 19 against. Expected: 20.3 and 18.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
57th
Numbers
67th

The two rank him within 10 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 612 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, 2023-24

The club
SEA took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.9% — 1.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
612 minutes at five-on-five — 26th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Adam Larsson45.5%55.2%48.8%
Yanni Gourde50.8%52.3%49.1%
Jordan Eberle54.3%51.0%55.2%

45.5% together, 55.2% for him apart and 48.8% for Larsson apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

66 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.