Samuel Bolduc
New York Islanders Defense
Six foot four, 224 pounds, and not one attempt from inside twenty feet all season.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | NYI | 17 | 2 | 1 | 3 | +5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 10.0 | 14:24 |
| 2023-24 | NYI | 34 | 2 | 3 | 5 | -4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 6.3 | 13:09 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 51 | 4 | 4 | 8 | +1 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 52 | 7.7 | 13:34 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
34 games, 2 goals and 3 assists for 5 points, 1 on the power play, 6 penalty minutes, 13:09 a night and minus-4. He took 48.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 433 minutes, and his ice went 16-19 against an expectation of 15.94-17.30.
Level at one end and two more conceded than the chances called for at the other. Thirty-four games on a blue line that lost two men for a third of the season, and 433 minutes is not enough to conclude much.
The Finesse Game
52 attempts at a median of 58 feet, 88 per cent of them from beyond forty and not one from inside twenty, 32 on goal, converted at 6.3 per cent.
Four career assists in 51 games. That shot chart is a young defenceman doing exactly what he has been told and nothing else. There is no puck-moving to describe yet.
The Physical Game
He is 6-4 and 224 and finishes his checks.
6 penalty minutes in 34 games is a very low rate for a man that size. He clears the crease and is hard to move, and there is a more punishing version of him available that has not appeared.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick in 2019 out of Laval, two seasons, and 8 points in 51 games, all of it for one organisation.
He is 23 and is the only defenceman on this roster under 24. That alone makes the fifty-one games worth watching.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 433 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48%
- 38th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.7%
- 7th 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: 16 for, 19 against. Expected: 15.9 and 17.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 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 437 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 433 minutes at five-on-five
- Robert Bortuzzonow UTA27%
- Ryan Pulock16%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- NYI took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.0% — 1.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 433 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Palmieri | 45.1% | 49.3% | 51.8% |
| Brock Nelson | 45.8% | 48.9% | 49.9% |
| Scott Mayfield | 42.7% | 49.5% | 43.0% |
45.1% together, 49.3% for him apart and 51.8% for Palmieri apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
52 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 88% from beyond forty.