This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sam Malinski
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Undrafted out of Cornell, 76 games on the third pair, and an even chance share doing it.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 99 | 8 | 17 | 25 | +11 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 146 | 5.5 | 15:33 |
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 10 assists in 76 games for 15 points, plus-8, on 15:57 a night.
Exactly 49.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 53rd percentile, over 1,089 minutes. His on-ice goals were 45-33 against an expected 40-41, so the results ran ahead of the play — a third pair that got good goaltending and better luck.
The Finesse Game
He starts plays rather than finishing them. The skating is good enough to retrieve under pressure and the first pass is quick, and unlike most defencemen that willing to move the puck early he does not give it away doing it.
115 shots with 79 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet is the profile of a man whose offence is entirely getting pucks to the net from the line. There is no rush game and no deception in it, which is why 15 points is probably close to the ceiling.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 190, and neither heavy nor soft. He takes contact to make a play and does not initiate it, and 16 penalty minutes across 76 games is a player who is rarely late and rarely angry.
He does not defend the net front and should not be asked to, which on this blue line is a problem — three of the top six cannot.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, four years at Cornell, and an NHL regular at 27, which is a career almost nobody has. Nothing about the way he plays suggests he thinks the job is safe.
The honest projection is a third-pair defenceman on a good team, which is exactly what Colorado needs him to be. The risk is that last season’s results flattered him by 8 goals and the shot share underneath was ordinary.
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.
“The skating is good enough to retrieve under pressure and the first pass is quick, and unlike most defencemen that willing to move the puck early he does not give it away doing it.”
“He takes contact to make a play and does not initiate it”
“16 penalty minutes across 76 games is a player who is rarely late and rarely angry”
“He does not defend the net front and should not be asked to, which on this blue line is a problem — three of the top six cannot.”
“Undrafted, four years at Cornell, and an NHL regular at 27, which is a career almost nobody has.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,089 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.8%
- 51st pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.4%
- 77th 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: 45 for, 33 against. Expected: 40.5 and 40.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 26 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 75th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.26 a game
- Distance
- 2.35 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.8 mph
- 86th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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 · 1089 minutes at five-on-five
- Calvin de Haanoff the roster22%
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
- COL took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.8% — 3.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,089 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Girard | 52.4% | 48.8% | 53.0% |
| Logan O'Connor | 58.2% | 47.1% | 50.7% |
| Casey Mittelstadt | 45.2% | 51.6% | 43.8% |
52.4% together, 48.8% for him apart and 53.0% for Girard apart. He was worse away from Girard, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Girard 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
155 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.