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

Wyatt Kaiser

57 games at 23 on 18 minutes a night, and a defenceman the club still has no read on.

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

2022-23	CHI	9	0	3	3	-4	4	0	0	0	14	0.0	18:36
2023-24	CHI	32	0	7	7	0	22	0	0	0	18	0.0	17:19
2024-25	CHI	57	4	4	8	0	14	0	0	0	66	6.1	18:07
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	98	4	14	18	-4	40	0	0	0	98	4.1	17:54

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 4 assists in 57 games for 8 points, even, on 18:07 a night.

46.5 per cent at five-on-five, the 23rd percentile — which on this roster is above average. 69 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet and 2 per cent from inside 20.

The Finesse Game

The skating is good and the first pass is adequate, and that is the whole of it. 66 shots and 4 goals, and 4 assists in 57 games at 18 minutes a night is one of the lowest offensive returns in this edition.

He does not stall a breakout. He also does not start anything, and three seasons of professional hockey have produced no evidence of the offensive game he had in college.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 190, and light. He does not clear a net front and does not win battles by force, and he defends with feet and stick.

14 penalty minutes over 57 games. Disciplined.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick out of Minnesota-Duluth, three years of being moved between the leagues, and a first extended NHL run at 23.

The projection is a third-pair defenceman. On a club with this much ice time to hand out, the fact that he has not taken more of it is itself an answer.

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.

a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a net front and does not win battles by force, and he defends with feet and stick.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not win battles by force”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“he defends with feet and stick”
nastyhe lacks it· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“14 penalty minutes over 57 games. Disciplined.”
transitionpresent and ordinary· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not stall a breakout. He also does not start anything”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 886 minutes

Expected goals: 46.5%; 23rd pct
Shot attempts: 47.1%; 26th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 31 against. Expected: 32.1 and 36.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

9th

Numbers

23rd

The two rank him within 14 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 — 63 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 · 57 games

Top speed: 21.7 mph; 55th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.42 a game
Distance: 2.53 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.6 mph; 38th 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 · 886 minutes at five-on-five

Connor Murphy18%
Seth Jonesnow FLA17%
TJ Brodieoff the roster17%

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: CHI took 43.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.5% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: 886 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Connor Bedard	45.5%	46.9%	40.8%
Ryan Donato	50.2%	45.0%	44.8%
Tyler Bertuzzi	45.6%	46.9%	39.5%

45.5% together, 46.9% for him apart and 40.8% for Bedard apart. Bedard was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Bedard 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

90 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.