This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sam Steel
Dallas Stars Center
A first-round pick on his third organisation at 25, coming off his best season.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | ANA | 22 | 6 | 5 | 11 | +2 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 33 | 18.2 | 14:58 |
| 2019-20 | ANA | 65 | 6 | 16 | 22 | -13 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 85 | 7.1 | 15:33 |
| 2020-21 | ANA | 42 | 6 | 6 | 12 | -7 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 14.3 | 14:32 |
| 2021-22 | ANA | 68 | 6 | 14 | 20 | -17 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 66 | 9.1 | 12:19 |
| 2022-23 | MIN | 65 | 10 | 18 | 28 | +11 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 85 | 11.8 | 14:58 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 262 | 34 | 59 | 93 | -24 | 70 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 311 | 10.9 | 14:21 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
10 goals and 18 assists in 65 games for Minnesota, plus-11 — the best plus-minus of his career by nine — at 14:58 a night.
28 points is a career high too, by six.
52.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 67th percentile, with his ice at 37-31 against an expectation of 36.41-33.60. Exactly as expected at one end and three better at the other. It is the first year of his career the possession numbers have been on the right side of the line.
Five seasons, 262 games, 93 points.
The Finesse Game
85 shots at a median of 21 feet, 48 per cent from inside twenty.
Inside forty: 71 shots, ten goals, 14.08 per cent. Beyond forty: 13 shots, none.
14 backhands out of 85 attempts, which is a high share and reads as a player who works in traffic rather than in space.
82.6 mph at the 5th percentile — one of the softest shots in the league. Every goal he scored came from inside forty feet, and with a shot that weak there is no other way it could have happened.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 185. 22.7 mph at the 73rd percentile and 1.4 bursts a game at the 69th — above average for a fourth-line centre, and 2.44 miles a game at the 40th.
18 penalty minutes in 65 games. He is not physical and at 185 pounds is not going to become so.
The skating is the reason he keeps getting contracts: he can play a checking role at pace without the size that role usually asks for.
The Intangibles
30th overall in 2016 out of Regina, four seasons in Anaheim that never produced more than 22 points, and one good year in Minnesota.
Dallas signed him at 25 to be a fourth-line centre. The Anaheim years look worse than they were — that club was among the worst in the league throughout — and the Minnesota season is the first evidence that he can play on a good 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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“he can play a checking role at pace without the size that role usually asks for”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 861 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52%
- 67th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.5%
- 75th 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: 37 for, 31 against. Expected: 36.4 and 33.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 60 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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, 2022-23 · 65 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 78th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.37 a game
- Distance
- 2.44 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.6 mph
- 26th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 with MIN · 861 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, 2022-23
- The club
- MIN took 50.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.0% — 2.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 861 minutes at five-on-five — 45th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mats Zuccarello | 53.9% | 49.8% | 50.6% |
| Kirill Kaprizov | 56.6% | 47.2% | 55.2% |
| Matt Dumba | 49.5% | 53.6% | 49.4% |
53.9% together, 49.8% for him apart and 50.6% for Zuccarello apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
118 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.