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

Victor Olofsson

15 goals in 56 games on a one-year deal, and a shot that is still worth a power-play spot at 30.

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	BUF	51	7	8	15	-1	4	1	0	1	66	10.6	11:34
2024-25	VGK	56	15	14	29	+17	16	6	0	4	109	13.8	14:30
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	370	105	106	211	-46	44	41	0	20	777	13.5	15:18

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

15 goals and 14 assists in 56 games for 29 points with Vegas, plus-17, on 14:30 a night, with 6 on the power play.

He scored at a 22-goal pace in a bottom-six role on a club that had no need of him, which is roughly what he has done everywhere: efficient in limited minutes, and never given more of them.

The Finesse Game

The one-timer is the whole player. It is a genuine NHL weapon from the left circle — quick, heavy, and released off a pass without needing a second to settle it — and it is why he has had a power-play job in every organisation he has been in.

At five-on-five it thins out. He does not carry the puck into the zone, he does not win it back, and his offence is largely dependent on somebody else creating the situation. 6 of his 15 goals came with the man advantage.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 180, and he avoids contact rather than absorbing it. He is not a forechecker, he does not go to the net front, and he will not win a puck along the wall against an NHL defenceman.

16 penalty minutes says what it looks like: he is nowhere near anything.

The Intangibles

A one-year contract for a specialist, which is the correct way to buy this player. Colorado’s power play was 15th in the league last season with more time on it than almost anybody, and the cheapest thing available to fix that is a right-handed release on the off side.

What he is not is a solution at five-on-five, and a coach who plays him 15 minutes a night will get 15 minutes of perimeter hockey for the 2 he wants.

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.

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.

transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not carry the puck into the zone, he does not win it back, and his offence is largely dependent on somebody else creating the situation.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“5-11 and 180, and he avoids contact rather than absorbing it.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He is not a forechecker, he does not go to the net front, and he will not win a puck along the wall against an NHL defenceman.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“he does not go to the net front”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“he will not win a puck along the wall against an NHL defenceman”
nastyhe lacks it· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“16 penalty minutes says what it looks like: he is nowhere near anything.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 709 minutes

Expected goals: 55.6%; 92nd pct
Shot attempts: 54.2%; 89th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 34 for, 16 against. Expected: 27.8 and 22.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

21st

Numbers

92nd

The numbers rank him 71 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 — 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 · 56 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 30th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.93 a game
Distance: 2.34 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.8 mph; 65th 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 with VGK · 709 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: VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.6% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 709 minutes at five-on-five — 28th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Noah Hanifin	59.4%	53.3%	55.0%
Alex Pietrangelo	48.9%	59.5%	54.3%
Nicolas Hague	47.7%	59.3%	47.7%

59.4% together, 53.3% for him apart and 55.0% for Hanifin 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

158 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 20% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.