Photo by Jenn G from Seattle, WA, CC BY-SA 2.0
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Zach Hyman
Edmonton Oilers Left Wing #18
A fifth-round pick who made himself a 30-goal scorer by being willing to stand in the one place nobody else wants to stand.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | TOR | 16 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 10.8 | 15:41 |
| 2016-17 | TOR | 82 | 10 | 18 | 28 | +2 | 30 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 156 | 6.4 | 16:42 |
| 2017-18 | TOR | 82 | 15 | 25 | 40 | +22 | 37 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 148 | 10.1 | 17:21 |
| 2018-19 | TOR | 71 | 21 | 20 | 41 | +16 | 65 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 144 | 14.6 | 17:17 |
| 2019-20 | TOR | 51 | 21 | 16 | 37 | +13 | 23 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 106 | 19.8 | 19:06 |
| 2020-21 | TOR | 43 | 15 | 18 | 33 | +19 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 115 | 13.0 | 19:22 |
| 2021-22 | EDM | 76 | 27 | 27 | 54 | -9 | 36 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 213 | 12.7 | 19:28 |
| 2022-23 | EDM | 79 | 36 | 47 | 83 | +13 | 39 | 15 | 0 | 3 | 276 | 13.0 | 20:09 |
| 2023-24 | EDM | 80 | 54 | 23 | 77 | +36 | 48 | 15 | 0 | 7 | 290 | 18.6 | 19:30 |
| 2024-25 | EDM | 73 | 27 | 17 | 44 | +9 | 32 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 210 | 12.9 | 18:53 |
| 2025-26 | EDM | 58 | 31 | 21 | 52 | +13 | 28 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 19.5 | 19:59 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 711 | 261 | 234 | 495 | +134 | 384 | 57 | 8 | 37 | 1854 | 14.1 | 18:38 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
31 goals and 52 points in 58 games. The goal rate was the best of his career, in a season he did not play all of.
The Finesse Game
He is not a natural scorer and he would tell you so himself. What he is, is the best net-front player on this team and one of the best anywhere at the specific skill of arriving at a rebound a half-second before the defenseman believes he can. His hands in a scramble are quick and, more to the point, unhurried — he does not panic with the puck in a crowd, which is why so many of his goals look like they went in by accident and none of them did.
Away from the crease, the value is on the forecheck. He gets to the defenseman first, takes the body, and turns pucks over more often than anyone else on the roster. Playing beside McDavid, that is the entire job description: win it back, give it to him, then go stand in front of the net.
His skating is heavy rather than fast. He gets where he is going.
The Physical Game
206 pounds of it, delivered every night. He finishes checks, he goes to the hard areas without being asked twice, and he takes cross-checks in the back for 2 hours without retaliating, which is its own kind of discipline. Very few forwards in the league absorb this much punishment on purpose.
The cost has started to show. He is into his thirties, the games missed have crept up, and this is not a style that ages quietly.
The Intangibles
The compete level is genuinely elite, and in his case it is not a throwaway line — it is the actual reason he is a top-line player rather than a fourth-liner. He is also the player younger teammates copy, which matters on a roster where the 2 best players cannot be copied by anybody.
The read going forward is simple. The skills that got him here are the ones that decline last. The body that delivers them is being asked for a great deal.
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
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
84.8% of his attempts in the slot, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
56.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 49.8% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.7, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:27 a game at five-on-five, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 896 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.5%
- 94th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.9%
- 74th 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: 50 for, 44 against. Expected: 52.4 and 40.3.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 3 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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, 2025-26 · 58 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 87th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.31 a game
- Distance
- 2.72 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 78.8 mph
- 17th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.6
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
8
points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 4 assists, 17 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 896 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, 2025-26
- The club
- EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.5% — 4.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 896 minutes at five-on-five — 48th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connor McDavid | 59.1% | 41.0% | 55.0% |
| Evan Bouchard | 61.9% | 48.1% | 55.6% |
| Mattias Ekholm | 61.8% | 48.7% | 55.9% |
59.1% together, 41.0% for him apart and 55.0% for McDavid 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
243 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 74% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.