Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sam Malinski

An undrafted defenceman who was plus-43, which is the highest number in this edition.

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

2023-24	COL	23	3	7	10	+3	6	1	0	1	31	9.7	14:14
2024-25	COL	76	5	10	15	+8	16	0	0	0	115	4.3	15:57
2025-26	COL	82	8	32	40	+43	22	0	0	1	164	4.9	17:37
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	181	16	49	65	+54	44	1	0	2	310	5.2	16:29

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

8 goals and 32 assists in all 82 games for 40 points, plus-43 — third on the team behind MacKinnon and Necas, and third in this edition — on 17 and a half minutes a night, with no power-play time worth mentioning.

The Finesse Game

He moves the puck quickly and confidently and shoots more than most third-pairing defencemen — 164 shots is a striking volume for someone playing 17 minutes without a man-advantage role, and 8 goals came from it.

The passing is the better half. 32 assists at even strength means he is starting plays rather than finishing them, and he does it without the puck-management errors that usually come with a defenceman this willing.

The skating is good enough to defend the rush and to activate without being caught.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 190, and he is not physical. He defends with stick and position, and heavy forwards can establish themselves in front of him.

The Intangibles

Undrafted out of Cornell, a full season at 27, and the best plus-minus in the league among defencemen. The caveat is real — plus-minus flatters a defenceman on a team that controlled play this thoroughly, and he played sheltered minutes.

But 40 points and 43 is not a fluke of deployment alone. This is the season that turns him from a depth piece into a player somebody pays.

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

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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
60.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 55.3% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.0, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,343 minutes

Expected goals: 60.3%; 100th pct
Shot attempts: 59%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 73 for, 31 against. Expected: 68.1 and 44.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

67th

Numbers

100th

The numbers rank him 33 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 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, 2025-26 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 91st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.41 a game
Distance: 2.61 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.8 mph; 87th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 4 assists, 29 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1343 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, 2025-26

The club: COL took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 60.3% — 3.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,343 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nathan MacKinnon	60.1%	60.4%	58.6%
Martin Necas	60.5%	60.2%	55.7%
Jack Drury	65.1%	58.7%	52.6%

60.1% together, 60.4% for him apart and 58.6% for MacKinnon 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

249 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.