This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Victor Olofsson

Twenty-eight goals, a minus-23, and four penalty minutes all season.

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

2018-19	BUF	6	2	2	4	+1	2	2	0	0	21	9.5	18:01
2019-20	BUF	54	20	22	42	-1	6	11	0	4	127	15.8	18:23
2020-21	BUF	56	13	19	32	-23	6	7	0	0	129	10.1	17:24
2021-22	BUF	72	20	29	49	-16	6	7	0	6	164	12.2	15:23
2022-23	BUF	75	28	12	40	-23	4	7	0	5	161	17.4	14:21
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	263	83	84	167	-62	24	34	0	15	602	13.8	16:12

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

28 goals and 12 assists in 75 games — 40 points at 14:21 a night, minus-23, with 7 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 161 shots, converting at 17.39 per cent, and 4 penalty minutes.

Twenty-eight goals and a minus-23 on a club that scored 296 goals is a difficult combination to produce, and it is the most honest summary of him available. 46.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 877 minutes, the 30th percentile — the worst of any forward here who played 70 games. His ice went 34-52 against an expectation of 34.58-39.65.

The Finesse Game

161 attempts at a median of 34 feet with only 19 per cent from inside 20 and 31 per cent from beyond 40, off a 92.8 mph shot at the 64th percentile.

The one-timer from the left circle on the power play is a genuinely excellent NHL skill and it is most of the career — 7 of his 28 goals came on it, and 83 goals in 263 games is a real rate. Away from the power play he shoots from distance and does not go inside, which is why 12 assists and a shot chart this far out sit together.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 180 and four penalty minutes in seventy-five games is close to a full season of touching nobody — he does not hit, is not hit, and is not involved in anything that happens below the goal line.

The skating is ordinary: 22.0 mph at the 36th percentile, 2.24 miles a game at the 26th. A winger who does not skate hard, does not defend and does not go to the net is a power-play specialist, and the minus-23 is what it costs to play him five-on-five.

The Intangibles

A hundred and eighty-first overall in 2014, a seventh-round pick who has scored 83 NHL goals, which is a remarkable outcome from that pick.

He is 28. He is exactly the sort of player a young, fast, defensively poor club should be trading rather than dressing — the power play does not need him as much as the five-on-five is hurt by him, and Buffalo has better wingers behind him.

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
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
31.7% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
disciplined· stays out of the box
0.05 penalty minutes a game over 75, 3rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“four penalty minutes in seventy-five games is close to a full season of touching nobody”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“A winger who does not skate hard, does not defend and does not go to the net is a power-play specialist, and the minus-23 is what it costs to play him five-on-five.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Away from the power play he shoots from distance and does not go inside”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 877 minutes

Expected goals: 46.6%; 30th pct
Shot attempts: 50.1%; 54th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 34 for, 52 against. Expected: 34.6 and 39.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

9th

Numbers

30th

The numbers rank him 21 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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

2022-23 · 877 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, 2022-23

The club: BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 3.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 877 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Casey Mittelstadt	50.2%	41.2%	48.8%
Owen Power	42.8%	49.1%	50.9%
Tyson Jost	49.7%	44.8%	48.2%

50.2% together, 41.2% for him apart and 48.8% for Mittelstadt apart. He was worse away from Mittelstadt, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Mittelstadt did.

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

205 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 19% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.