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

Troy Stecher

5-10, 66 games, 7 points, and a seventh defenceman who played like a sixth.

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	EDM	66	3	4	7	-2	27	0	0	0	55	5.5	13:52
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	560	22	95	117	-23	252	1	1	1	709	3.1	17:27

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

3 goals and 4 assists in 66 games for 7 points, minus-2, on 13:52 a night.

48.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 39th percentile, over 822 minutes. His on-ice goals were 26-29 against an expected 31-33, which is five goals of scoring that did not arrive and four fewer conceded than the chances called for.

The Finesse Game

Modest. 55 shots in 66 games and 3 goals, and 4 assists — there is essentially no offensive contribution.

The first pass is quick and safe and he does not panic under a forecheck, which is the job.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 184, and small. He does not clear a net front and cannot win a battle by force, and he blocks shots willingly and takes the punishment.

27 penalty minutes over 66 games. He is beaten physically often enough that the stick comes out.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, five organisations, and a decade of being a serviceable depth defenceman.

At 31 the projection is a seventh defenceman who plays 50 games. On a club with genuine depth on the blue line, that is the correct role.

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
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.

clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a net front”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“cannot win a battle by force”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“he blocks shots willingly and takes the punishment”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“He is beaten physically often enough that the stick comes out.”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, five organisations, and a decade of being a serviceable depth defenceman.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 822 minutes

Expected goals: 48.6%; 40th pct
Shot attempts: 47.5%; 29th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 29 against. Expected: 31.4 and 33.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

13th

Numbers

40th

The numbers rank him 27 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 — 65 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 · 66 games

Top speed: 21.5 mph; 44th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.50 a game
Distance: 2.00 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.4 mph; 36th 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 · 822 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, 2024-25

The club: EDM took 54.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.6% — 5.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 822 minutes at five-on-five — 38th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Darnell Nurse	51.2%	45.1%	54.8%
Adam Henrique	43.3%	51.4%	48.1%
Connor Brown	47.0%	49.3%	51.9%

51.2% together, 45.1% for him apart and 54.8% for Nurse apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Nurse and did not follow 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

77 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.