This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Urho Vaakanainen
New York Rangers Defense
14 assists in 51 games at 16:25, seven seasons after being drafted 18th overall, and finally a regular.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | BOS | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 9:06 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 16:51 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0.0 | 18:55 |
| 2021-22 | BOS/ANA | 29 | 0 | 6 | 6 | -5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 19:19 |
| 2022-23 | ANA | 23 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 0.0 | 16:27 |
| 2023-24 | ANA | 68 | 1 | 13 | 14 | 0 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 1.5 | 17:29 |
| 2024-25 | ANA/NYR | 51 | 2 | 14 | 16 | +8 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 4.8 | 16:25 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 187 | 3 | 37 | 40 | -15 | 56 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 182 | 1.7 | 17:19 |
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
2 goals and 14 assists in 51 games between Anaheim and New York — 16 points, plus-8, at 16:25 a night on 18 penalty minutes.
45.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 15th percentile, across 737 minutes. 14 assists in 51 games is comfortably the best rate of his career, which says less about a breakout than about a man who had never been given a full year of games.
The Finesse Game
The skating is clean and the puck moves quickly off his stick under pressure, which is the reason he keeps being given third-pair minutes by clubs that have run out of other options.
There is no shot. 79 per cent of his attempts came from beyond 40 feet, 7 per cent from inside 20, and 3 goals in 187 career games is the record. He is a distributor at the line and nothing else, and 14 assists on a bad chance share is the most that shape produces.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 202, and neither heavy nor soft. He will take the body and he will go to the paint, and he does not move a grown winger out of it.
18 penalty minutes in 51 games is a quiet number for a defenceman on a third pair. The defending is positional and it holds up against depth lines; against a first line it does not.
The Intangibles
The 18th pick in 2017, seven years and four organisations later he had played 187 games, and last season was the first in which he was simply in the lineup.
He is 26 and this is the useful version of him: a fourth or fifth defenceman who can be trusted for sixteen minutes and does not have to be hidden. That is a long way from where the draft position pointed and it is a genuine NHL career.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 737 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.2%
- 15th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46%
- 17th 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: 25 for, 29 against. Expected: 25.3 and 30.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 496 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 673 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
- NYR took 47.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.2% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 737 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Braden Schneider | 46.2% | 43.4% | 45.3% |
| Artemi Panarin | 46.9% | 44.4% | 51.2% |
| Vincent Trocheck | 47.5% | 44.4% | 48.5% |
46.2% together, 43.4% for him apart and 45.3% for Schneider apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
68 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 42 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.