This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Troy Stecher
Edmonton Oilers Defense
Undrafted, 5-10, 494 games, and a shot-blocking third pairing that came out ahead of its chances.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | VAN | 71 | 3 | 21 | 24 | -16 | 25 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 125 | 2.4 | 19:59 |
| 2017-18 | VAN | 68 | 1 | 10 | 11 | -7 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 1.1 | 18:49 |
| 2018-19 | VAN | 78 | 2 | 21 | 23 | +9 | 32 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 105 | 1.9 | 19:55 |
| 2019-20 | VAN | 69 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +10 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86 | 5.8 | 15:21 |
| 2020-21 | DET | 44 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -13 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 55 | 5.5 | 17:19 |
| 2021-22 | DET/LAK | 29 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -7 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 2.0 | 16:40 |
| 2022-23 | ARI/CGY | 81 | 3 | 11 | 14 | -6 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 3.4 | 16:22 |
| 2023-24 | ARI/EDM | 54 | 1 | 6 | 7 | +9 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 51 | 2.0 | 18:07 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 494 | 19 | 91 | 110 | -21 | 225 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 654 | 2.9 | 17:56 |
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
54 games, 1 goal and 6 assists for 7 points, 32 penalty minutes, 18:07 a night and plus-9. He took 49.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 869 minutes, the 50th percentile, and his ice went 34-27 against an expectation of 34.52-35.10.
Eight goals fewer conceded than the chances called for, on a pairing that broke exactly even at creating. Eighteen minutes a night is more than a club should need from him and he did not embarrass anybody with it.
The Finesse Game
51 shots at a median of 47 feet with 60 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 2.0 per cent. One goal in 54 games and 19 in 494 career games.
91 career assists in 494 games. The first pass is quick and safe and there is no third option behind it. At 5-10 he cannot hold the puck at the line against pressure and he does not try to.
The Physical Game
He blocks shots at 5-10 and 184, which is most of what he is for.
He is hard to move for his size and he defends the front of the net by getting under people rather than over them. 32 penalty minutes in 54 games is a real rate for a man this small, and a lot of it is a stick when he has been beaten wide.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Richmond, three years at North Dakota, and 494 games since. He is 5-10 and 184 and has outlasted most of the men picked ahead of him.
At 30 he is exactly what he was at 24, which for an undrafted defenceman is the whole point. The club needs him to play fifteen minutes rather than eighteen.
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.
- 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.
“He blocks shots at 5-10 and 184, which is most of what he is for.”
“He is hard to move for his size and he defends the front of the net by getting under people rather than over them.”
“32 penalty minutes in 54 games is a real rate for a man this small, and a lot of it is a stick when he has been beaten wide.”
“Undrafted, out of Richmond, three years at North Dakota, and 494 games since.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 869 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.6%
- 50th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 53rd 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: 34 for, 27 against. Expected: 34.5 and 35.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 37 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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 · 54 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 43rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.57 a game
- Distance
- 2.55 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.8 mph
- 32nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 ARI · 759 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
- EDM took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.6% — 7.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 869 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juuso Välimäki | 54.3% | 47.3% | 49.8% |
| Alex Kerfoot | 50.4% | 49.3% | 45.5% |
| Nick Bjugstad | 48.4% | 50.0% | 48.9% |
54.3% together, 47.3% for him apart and 49.8% for Välimäki 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
82 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.