This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sam Steel
Dallas Stars Center
A fourth-line centre who took the defensive-zone draws and finished minus-6 doing it.
| 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 | DAL | 77 | 9 | 15 | 24 | 0 | 29 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 86 | 10.5 | 13:15 |
| 2024-25 | DAL | 79 | 6 | 19 | 25 | -6 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 89 | 6.7 | 14:08 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 418 | 49 | 93 | 142 | -30 | 130 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 486 | 10.1 | 14:07 |
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
6 goals and 19 assists in 79 games for 25 points, minus-6, on 14:08 a night.
49.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 51st percentile, and on-ice goals of 24-35 against an expected 33-33 — the worst goal differential on the club relative to the chances, which for a man taking this share of defensive-zone starts is bad luck as much as bad play.
The Finesse Game
Quick, tidy, and short of finish. 89 shots and 6 goals is the honest summary of the shot, and 19 assists is what he provides instead: he is a distributor in the bottom six, which is more useful than it sounds when the wingers are shooters.
He wins the puck back cleanly and moves it early. There is no rush game here and no deception, and there has not been since he was a junior scorer.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 185, and light. He does not win board battles against defencemen and does not go to the net front, which limits what a coach can ask of a fourth-line centre.
31 penalty minutes is high for a player of this size and role, and most of it is stick work — the sign of a man who has been beaten and is reaching.
The Intangibles
A former first-round pick who was going to be a scorer and became a checking centre instead, which he has accepted more gracefully than most.
The projection is a fourth-line centre on a good team, worth the modest money, and replaceable. On a club with genuine centre depth he is the fourth of them, and that is the correct place for him.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“he is a distributor in the bottom six, which is more useful than it sounds when the wingers are shooters”
“He does not win board battles against defencemen”
“does not go to the net front”
“31 penalty minutes is high for a player of this size and role, and most of it is stick work — the sign of a man who has been beaten and is reaching.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 898 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.9%
- 52nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 73rd 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: 24 for, 35 against. Expected: 33.0 and 33.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 27 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 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 87th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.38 a game
- Distance
- 2.34 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.0 mph
- 59th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 898 minutes at five-on-five
- Oskar Bäck44%
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
- DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 898 minutes at five-on-five — 45th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oskar Bäck | 49.1% | 50.4% | 49.6% |
| Thomas Harley | 50.7% | 49.4% | 53.4% |
| Esa Lindell | 50.5% | 49.6% | 50.6% |
49.1% together, 50.4% for him apart and 49.6% for Bäck 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
119 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.