This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Teddy Blueger
Pittsburgh Penguins Center
The 17th-most buried chair of 652 skaters and the 14th-heaviest penalty-killing load of 393 forwards.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | PIT | 28 | 6 | 4 | 10 | +7 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 33 | 18.2 | 11:03 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 69 | 9 | 13 | 22 | +2 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 102 | 8.8 | 15:49 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 43 | 7 | 15 | 22 | +10 | 16 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 49 | 14.3 | 14:51 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 65 | 9 | 19 | 28 | +12 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 93 | 9.7 | 15:01 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 205 | 31 | 51 | 82 | +31 | 66 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 277 | 11.2 | 14:43 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
65 games, 9 goals and 19 assists at 15:01 a night, plus-12, ten penalty minutes, 93 shots. One of the nine came short-handed. Fifty-second overall in 2012, four seasons, 205 games, 82 points.
The Finesse Game
He started 29.5 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 17th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and still took 50.2 per cent of the expected goals.
One hundred and twenty-three starts in the attacking end against 294 in his own. On a club that gave Evgeni Malkin the 13th-softest chair in hockey, somebody had to take this one, and Blueger took it and broke even.
1.89 even-strength points per 60 is the 56th percentile and none of his points came on the power play — five seconds a night, the 11th percentile.
5.72 shots per 60 is the 22nd percentile at 9.7 per cent and his shot is 83.7 mph, the 10th percentile among forwards — the softest on this roster. He is not going to score.
2.27 takeaways per 60 is the 87th percentile against 1.35 giveaways at the 40th — the best puck ledger of any Penguin forward.
48.5 per cent of the attempts underneath the expected-goal share: he gives up territory and does not give up chances, which is the shape a checking centre is paid for.
The Physical Game
5.35 hits per 60 is the 65th percentile and 1.97 blocks the 62nd at 6-0 and 185 pounds.
0.31 penalties taken per 60 is the 10th percentile, and ten penalty minutes in sixty-five games is the cleanest record of any Pittsburgh skater. For a man playing the hardest minutes on the roster that is the whole argument.
The Intangibles
2:14 short-handed a night is the 14th-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games, on the club with the 3rd-smallest penalty-killing workload in the league.
22.6 mph is the 62nd percentile, 6.0 bursts per 60 the 59th, 9.57 miles per 60 the 41st. Nothing in the skating is remarkable in either direction.
He is 28 with 205 games and eighty-two points. The chair, the kill, the takeaways and the discipline are four real things and none of them will ever be worth more than twenty-eight points a season. That is exactly what a third-line centre is, and this club has spent years without one.
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
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
0.15 penalty minutes a game over 65, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
30% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 4th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“2:14 short-handed a night is the 14th-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games, on the club with the 3rd-smallest penalty-killing workload in the league.”
“He started 29.5 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 17th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and still took 50.2 per cent of the expected goals.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 828 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.2%
- 58th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.5%
- 41st 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: 33 for, 23 against. Expected: 29.1 and 28.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2021-22 · 65 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 74th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.49 a game
- Distance
- 2.39 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 83.7 mph
- 33rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 828 minutes at five-on-five
- Brock McGinn66%
- Brian Boyleoff the roster19%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- PIT took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.2% — 3.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 828 minutes at five-on-five — 44th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brock McGinn | 48.9% | 52.2% | 49.9% |
| Zach Aston-Reese | 48.5% | 51.3% | 49.0% |
| John Marino | 47.0% | 52.1% | 53.0% |
48.9% together, 52.2% for him apart and 49.9% for McGinn apart. He was better away from McGinn, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost McGinn.
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
112 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.