Valtteri Puustinen
Pittsburgh Penguins Right Wing
A seventh-round pick with the highest chance share on the club and fifteen assists in 52 games.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | PIT | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 10:14 |
| 2023-24 | PIT | 52 | 5 | 15 | 20 | +4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86 | 5.8 | 11:45 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 53 | 5 | 16 | 21 | +6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 87 | 5.8 | 11:43 |
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
52 games, 5 goals and 15 assists for 20 points, none on the power play, 6 penalty minutes, 11:45 a night and plus-4. He took 55.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 540 minutes — the 91st percentile and the highest chance share of anybody on the club — and his ice went 25-19 against an expectation of 24.01-18.95.
Within a goal of the chances at both ends. Fifty-five point nine per cent from a rookie playing eleven minutes a night is the most interesting number on this roster.
The Finesse Game
113 attempts at a median of 31 feet with 29 per cent of them from inside twenty, 85 of those on goal, converted at 5.8 per cent against a career 5.75 across 87 shots.
Fifteen assists against five goals in 52 games. He is a passer before he is a shooter and finds the middle of the ice from the wall better than a fourth-line winger has any need to; three assists for every goal in a first season is either a rate that regresses or a player who has been misfiled.
The Physical Game
He is 5-11 and 180 and took 6 penalty minutes.
Six career penalty minutes in 53 games. He is small, he does not finish checks, and the entire physical question about him is whether he can hold a puck along the wall against men forty pounds heavier for a full season.
The Intangibles
Two hundred and third overall in 2019, a seventh-round pick, two seasons, and 21 points in 53 games.
He was the 203rd man taken in his draft and he led his club in chance share as a 24-year-old rookie. That is worth more attention than 20 points suggests.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.12 penalty minutes a game over 52, 4th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He is a passer before he is a shooter and finds the middle of the ice from the wall better than a fourth-line winger has any need to; three assists for every goal in a first season is either a rate that regresses or a player who has been misfiled.”
“He is small, he does not finish checks, and the entire physical question about him is whether he can hold a puck along the wall against men forty pounds heavier for a full season.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 540 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.9%
- 91st pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 72nd 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, 19 against. Expected: 24.0 and 18.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 44 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 — 69 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 · 52 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 53rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.58 a game
- Distance
- 1.91 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.5 mph
- 87th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 · 540 minutes at five-on-five
- Lars Eller54%
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
- PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.9% — 4.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 540 minutes at five-on-five — 20th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reilly Smith | 57.3% | 54.0% | 50.7% |
| Lars Eller | 56.2% | 55.5% | 48.5% |
| Erik Karlsson | 57.3% | 54.8% | 53.5% |
57.3% together, 54.0% for him apart and 50.7% for Smith 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
113 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 29% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 27% from beyond forty.