This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Shayne Gostisbehere

Fifty-six points from the blue line and a minus-sixteen, and he is here to replace a defensive defenceman.

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

2014-15	PHI	2	0	0	0	-2	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	12:34
2015-16	PHI	64	17	29	46	+8	24	8	0	5	152	11.2	20:05
2016-17	PHI	76	7	32	39	-21	32	2	0	1	198	3.5	19:36
2017-18	PHI	78	13	52	65	+10	25	7	0	2	221	5.9	21:27
2018-19	PHI	78	9	28	37	-20	22	4	0	2	180	5.0	19:40
2019-20	PHI	42	5	7	12	-4	20	1	0	1	73	6.9	18:18
2020-21	PHI	41	9	11	20	-2	6	5	0	0	85	10.6	19:56
2021-22	ARI	82	14	37	51	-23	26	2	0	2	151	9.3	22:11
2022-23	ARI/CAR	75	13	28	41	-5	32	5	2	2	155	8.4	20:49
2023-24	DET	81	10	46	56	-16	16	2	0	2	139	7.2	19:05
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	619	97	270	367	-75	203	36	2	17	1356	7.1	20:13

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

10 goals and 46 assists in 81 games for Detroit — 56 points at 19:05 a night, minus-16, with 2 power-play goals and 2 game-winners on 139 shots at 7.19 per cent, and 16 penalty minutes.

Fifty-six points is more than any defenceman on this roster produced, and the minus-16 is the other half of the same player.

46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,195 minutes, the 31st percentile — the lowest of any defenceman on this roster by nine points. His ice went 42-47 against an expectation of 43.87-49.59.

The Finesse Game

139 attempts at a median of 49 feet, with 74 per cent from beyond 40 and 6 per cent from inside 20, converting at 7.19 per cent.

He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and he will walk the line and hold it until a killing box commits. 270 career assists and 36 career power-play goals in 619 games — this is a power-play defenceman first and the rest of the game is what a club pays for it.

Forty-six assists is a genuinely rare number from a defenceman and it is why he keeps being signed.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 183, and he does not defend. He cannot clear his crease, he loses battles on the wall, and the gap control is the weakest of any defenceman on this roster.

16 penalty minutes in 81 games and 203 in 619 for his career is a low rate, and it is low because he is beaten cleanly rather than forced into a foul.

The Intangibles

Seventy-eighth overall in 2012 by Philadelphia, a Calder finalist as a rookie, and 619 games and 367 points at 31 with a career minus-75 across four clubs.

He was signed here in the summer. A club that has just lost Brett Pesce and Brady Skjei — two defencemen whose entire value was defending — has replaced them with the best offensive defenceman available and the worst defensive one, and that is either a deliberate change of identity or the market.

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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.20 penalty minutes a game over 81, 7th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and he will walk the line and hold it until a killing box commits.**”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and he will walk the line and hold it until a killing box commits.**”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“**5-11 and 183, and he does not defend.** He cannot clear his crease, he loses battles on the wall, and the gap control is the weakest of any defenceman on this roster.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“**5-11 and 183, and he does not defend.** He cannot clear his crease, he loses battles on the wall, and the gap control is the weakest of any defenceman on this roster.”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“**5-11 and 183, and he does not defend.** He cannot clear his crease, he loses battles on the wall, and the gap control is the weakest of any defenceman on this roster.”
defends-with-reachhe lacks it· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He cannot clear his crease, he loses battles on the wall, and the gap control is the weakest of any defenceman on this roster.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,195 minutes

Expected goals: 46.9%; 32nd pct
Shot attempts: 48.9%; 45th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 47 against. Expected: 43.9 and 49.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

35th

Numbers

32nd

The two rank him within 3 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2023-24 · 81 games

Top speed: 21.2 mph; 27th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.21 a game
Distance: 2.61 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.7 mph; 80th 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with DET · 1195 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, 2023-24

The club: DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,195 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Olli Määttä	50.2%	43.4%	49.9%
Alex DeBrincat	48.1%	46.4%	49.8%
Joe Veleno	47.6%	46.7%	42.2%

50.2% together, 43.4% for him apart and 49.9% for Määttä apart. He was worse away from Määttä, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Määttä 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

199 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.