This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Zach Hyman

Fifty-four goals from a median shot distance of eleven feet, and the second-highest chance share in this edition.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	580	203	196	399	+112	324	41	8	28	1485	13.7	18:28

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

80 games, 54 goals and 23 assists for 77 points, 15 on the power play, 48 penalty minutes, 19:30 a night and plus-36. He took 63.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,245 minutes, the 100th percentile, and his ice went 90-50 against an expectation of 84.99-49.82.

54 goals was third in this edition behind Auston Matthews and Sam Reinhart. The chance share is second only to Connor McDavid’s, which is not a coincidence and is also not nothing.

The Finesse Game

290 shots at a median of 11 feet with 70 per cent from inside 20 feet. Only Gabriel Vilardi shoots from closer in this edition, on a quarter of the volume.

The hands are ordinary and the shot is ordinary and neither matters, because he is standing where the puck is going to be. 203 career goals on a career 13.7 per cent is a conversion rate built entirely on location.

The Physical Game

He goes to the front of the net and stays there while a defenceman cross-checks him, which is the single skill his career is built on.

He forechecks hard and finishes his checks at 6-1 and 206, and 324 career penalty minutes is the cost of arriving first. He wins pucks along the wall and hands them to better players.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick in 2010 out of Toronto, four years at Michigan, and 399 points in 580 games. He was a checking winger for six seasons before anybody suggested he could score.

He is 32 and the game he plays is the one that ages worst. There is no version of Zach Hyman that works at 36 the way this one does, and the club has him for a while yet.

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

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
75.8% of his attempts in the slot, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
63.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.5% for his club in the minutes he sat: +9.5, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:34 a game at five-on-five, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% 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
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He goes to the front of the net and stays there while a defenceman cross-checks him, which is the single skill his career is built on.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard and finishes his checks at 6-1 and 206, and 324 career penalty minutes is the cost of arriving first.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins pucks along the wall and hands them to better players.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He goes to the front of the net and stays there while a defenceman cross-checks him, which is the single skill his career is built on.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,245 minutes

Expected goals: 63%; 100th pct
Shot attempts: 59.1%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 90 for, 50 against. Expected: 85.0 and 49.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

76th

Numbers

100th

The numbers rank him 24 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 — 75 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.63 a game
Distance: 2.65 miles a game
Hardest shot: 83.5 mph; 30th 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

2023-24 · 1245 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, 2023-24

The club: EDM took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 63.0% — 6.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,245 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Connor McDavid	65.2%	55.5%	55.9%
Evan Bouchard	65.7%	58.4%	58.2%
Mattias Ekholm	65.9%	59.6%	57.9%

65.2% together, 55.5% for him apart and 55.9% 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

400 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 54 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 70% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.