This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Shayne Gostisbehere

45 points and a 60.5 per cent chance share — the highest of any skater in the league — and a defenceman nobody trusts to defend.

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	CAR	70	7	38	45	+1	52	4	0	0	122	5.7	18:31
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	689	104	308	412	-74	255	40	2	17	1478	7.0	20:03

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

7 goals and 38 assists in 70 games for 45 points, plus-1, on 18:31 a night — the most points by any defenceman on the roster.

60.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 99th percentile — the highest chance share of any skater in the league. His on-ice goals were 44-37 against an expected 52-34, which means that even with the best share in hockey the club conceded 6 more than it should have while he played.

The Finesse Game

The puck game is everything. He walks the line, sees the seam, and gets pucks through traffic to the net, and 38 assists on a club that finished 28th in finishing is a genuine total.

122 shots from a median of 50 feet, and 74 per cent from beyond 40 — this is a point shooter rather than a rushing defenceman, and the release is quick enough to justify the volume. The power-play instincts are the best on the roster.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 183, and there is essentially nothing. He does not clear a crease, does not win a battle below the goal line, and is moved off pucks by forwards of any size.

52 penalty minutes over 70 games is a high rate and it is the tell — a defenceman who cannot win physically ends up reaching. That is what a 100th-percentile chance share and a negative goal differential look like at the same time.

The Intangibles

Eleven seasons, four organisations, and a career of being simultaneously the most productive defenceman on his club and the one every coach eventually reduces the minutes of.

At 32 in this system he has found the best version of the arrangement: heavy offensive-zone usage, a partner who defends, and a club that does not ask him to do the thing he cannot. It works, and the goal differential says it is still not free.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
60.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 54.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.7, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He walks the line, sees the seam, and gets pucks through traffic to the net, and 38 assists on a club that finished 28th in finishing is a genuine total.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a crease”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not win a battle below the goal line”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“is moved off pucks by forwards of any size”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“52 penalty minutes over 70 games is a high rate and it is the tell — a defenceman who cannot win physically ends up reaching.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 997 minutes

Expected goals: 60.1%; 99th pct
Shot attempts: 62.2%; 100th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 37 against. Expected: 51.7 and 34.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

99th

The numbers rank him 82 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 — 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, 2024-25 · 70 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 38th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.13 a game
Distance: 2.66 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.3 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

2024-25 · 997 minutes at five-on-five

Sean Walker78%
Scott Morrownow NYR8%

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: CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 60.1% — 4.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 997 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sean Walker	60.6%	57.9%	49.2%
Jesperi Kotkaniemi	59.4%	60.4%	52.9%
Eric Robinson	55.8%	62.1%	56.0%

60.6% together, 57.9% for him apart and 49.2% for Walker apart. Walker was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Walker than for him.

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

201 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.