This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Ryker Evans

Twenty-five points in his first full season at 23, on the third pair of a club that was 29th in chance share.

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

2023-24	SEA	36	1	8	9	-5	20	0	0	0	44	2.3	19:11
2024-25	SEA	73	5	20	25	-12	30	1	0	0	59	8.5	19:29
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	109	6	28	34	-17	50	1	0	0	103	5.8	19:23

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

5 goals and 20 assists in 73 games — 25 points at 19:29 a night, minus-12, with 30 penalty minutes. It was his first full NHL season.

45.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 22nd percentile, across 1,223 minutes. His ice went 46-52 against an expectation of 40.87-48.86 — six goals better than expected for and level against, which for a 23-year-old playing nineteen minutes on a bad possession club is a respectable first year.

The Finesse Game

59 attempts in 73 games at a median of 50 feet with 67 per cent from beyond 40. He does not shoot much and 5 goals is a good return from the volume.

20 assists is the number that matters. He is a puck-mover: he retrieves quickly, he escapes the first forechecker, and he is comfortable carrying it through the neutral zone. On this blue line that is a scarce commodity below Dunn.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 195 and light for the position. He does not clear a crease and he is not going to out-muscle a heavy forward in front of his own net.

30 penalty minutes in 73 games is a moderate rate. He defends by angling and by stick position, and against a first line that has not been consistently good enough yet.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2021, and 109 NHL games in after two full American League seasons.

He is 23. The club has three defencemen over 32 in its top four and this is the one who has to become something.

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.

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.

transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is a puck-mover: he retrieves quickly, he escapes the first forechecker, and he is comfortable carrying it through the neutral zone.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**20 assists is the number that matters.**”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a crease and he is not going to out-muscle a heavy forward in front of his own net.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He defends by angling and by stick position, and against a first line that has not been consistently good enough yet.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,223 minutes

Expected goals: 45.5%; 19th pct
Shot attempts: 46.6%; 22nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 52 against. Expected: 40.9 and 48.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

36th

Numbers

19th

The two rank him within 17 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 — 70 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 · 73 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 59th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.75 a game
Distance: 2.62 miles a game
Hardest shot: 97.5 mph; 90th 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

2024-25 · 1223 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, 2024-25

The club: SEA took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.5% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,223 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brandon Montour	45.2%	45.8%	49.4%
Matty Beniers	44.2%	46.0%	51.5%
Jaden Schwartz	46.2%	45.3%	47.5%

45.2% together, 45.8% for him apart and 49.4% for Montour apart. Montour was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

106 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.