Spencer Stastney

A small, mobile seventh defenseman who has been on the edge of a full-time job for 4 years.

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

2022-23	NSH	8	0	2	2	+5	2	0	0	0	9	0.0	17:37
2023-24	NSH	20	2	2	4	+9	4	0	0	1	11	18.2	15:59
2024-25	NSH	23	0	3	3	-7	4	0	0	0	15	0.0	16:11
2025-26	NSH/EDM	66	2	8	10	-11	20	0	0	0	56	3.6	15:30
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	117	4	15	19	-4	30	0	0	1	91	4.4	15:52

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 assist — 1 point in total — in 36 games for Nashville, minus-10, 16 minutes a night. That is a thin line however it is read.

The Finesse Game

Skating is the calling card. He moves well in all 4 directions, which is what has kept him in the conversation despite the size, and he is comfortable escaping pressure with his feet rather than with an outlet pass.

The offense has never translated. He put up points at Notre Dame and in the AHL and has almost none across 117 NHL games, which usually means a player who can beat one forechecker but not a whole structure. He does not shoot much and does not carry the puck into the offensive zone with any authority.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 184 and it shows. He can be overpowered in front of his own net and in board battles against real NHL forwards, and no amount of positioning entirely solves that.

The Intangibles

4 years of call-ups and healthy scratches and short looks. He does the things that keep a player employed — skates well, plays a simple game, does not complain about the role — and has not done the one thing that would make him a regular, which is produce.

He is depth. On most nights that means the press box, and on the nights it does not, he plays a sheltered 15 minutes and gives you no trouble.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 916 minutes

Expected goals: 49.4%; 49th pct
Shot attempts: 51.4%; 70th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 35 against. Expected: 37.0 and 37.8.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

27th

Numbers

49th

Blind

15th

The numbers rank him 22 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 34 points from the numbers; this one lands 22. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three bars are percentiles among the 656 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, 2025-26 · 66 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 84th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.02 a game
Distance: 2.16 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.4 mph; 21st 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 0 assists, 14 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 519 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, 2025-26

The club: EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 2.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: 916 minutes at five-on-five — 50th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Justin Barron	52.7%	48.5%	46.9%
Ty Emberson	52.0%	48.6%	46.4%
Matt Savoie	48.2%	49.7%	50.6%

52.7% together, 48.5% for him apart and 46.9% for Barron 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

79 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 1% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.