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

Tyler Kleven

Six-foot-five and 225 pounds with the worst chance share on the blue line, and one per cent of his shot attempts from inside 20 feet.

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

2022-23	OTT	8	0	2	2	-1	2	0	0	0	11	0.0	14:41
2023-24	OTT	9	0	1	1	-1	2	0	0	0	7	0.0	12:39
2024-25	OTT	79	4	6	10	-11	27	0	0	1	78	5.1	14:28
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	96	4	9	13	-13	31	0	0	1	96	4.2	14:19

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

4 goals and 6 assists in 79 games — 10 points at 14:28 a night, minus-11, with 27 penalty minutes.

44.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 12th percentile — the worst figure on the roster alongside Zetterlund. His ice went 28-36 against an expectation of 30.86-38.52: the results were poor and the underlying play was poorer.

The Finesse Game

78 attempts at a median of 53 feet with 73 per cent from beyond 40 and 1 per cent from inside 20. The shot is heavy and it is a point shot; 4 goals is what it produced.

The puck game is the limitation. He is not comfortable under a forecheck, the first pass is not always on, and the club’s exits get worse when he is the man making them.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 225 and this is the entire case for him. He hits very hard, he blocks shots, and he moves men out of the front of his own net by force.

27 penalty minutes in 79 games is a reasonable rate for a defenceman who plays this way. He is not an agitator; the physicality is functional rather than provocative.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2020 out of North Dakota, and 96 NHL games in. He is 23 and last season was his first full one.

The size is real and so is the third-pairing chance share. The club has to decide whether he becomes a penalty-killing bottom-pair defenceman or something more, and one season at 44.6 per cent is not the evidence to settle it.

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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 80 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.0%, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits very hard, he blocks shots, and he moves men out of the front of his own net by force.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He hits very hard, he blocks shots, and he moves men out of the front of his own net by force.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He hits very hard, he blocks shots, and he moves men out of the front of his own net by force.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He is not an agitator; the physicality is functional rather than provocative.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is not comfortable under a forecheck, the first pass is not always on, and the club's exits get worse when he is the man making them.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,063 minutes

Expected goals: 44.5%; 15th pct
Shot attempts: 47.1%; 26th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 28 for, 36 against. Expected: 30.9 and 38.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

21st

Numbers

15th

The two rank him within 6 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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 · 79 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.25 a game
Distance: 2.09 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.2 mph; 79th 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 · 1063 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: OTT took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.5% — 5.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,063 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nikolas Matinpalo	44.4%	44.5%	54.5%
Tim Stützle	47.9%	43.2%	55.4%
Adam Gaudette	42.5%	45.0%	56.5%

44.4% together, 44.5% for him apart and 54.5% for Matinpalo apart. Matinpalo was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

110 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 65 feet. 1% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.