Zach Werenski
Columbus Blue Jackets Defense #8
81 points and 26 and a half minutes a night, and the goals still went against him.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CBJ | 78 | 11 | 36 | 47 | +17 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 188 | 5.9 | 20:55 |
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 77 | 16 | 21 | 37 | +8 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 207 | 7.7 | 22:35 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 82 | 11 | 33 | 44 | -12 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 168 | 6.6 | 22:54 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 63 | 20 | 21 | 41 | +9 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 187 | 10.7 | 23:59 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ | 35 | 7 | 13 | 20 | -9 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 8.9 | 24:22 |
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 68 | 11 | 37 | 48 | -15 | 22 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 216 | 5.1 | 25:40 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 13 | 3 | 5 | 8 | -6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 41 | 7.3 | 23:36 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 70 | 11 | 46 | 57 | 0 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 202 | 5.5 | 24:27 |
| 2024-25 | CBJ | 81 | 23 | 59 | 82 | +12 | 31 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 298 | 7.7 | 26:45 |
| 2025-26 | CBJ | 75 | 22 | 59 | 81 | +7 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 260 | 8.5 | 26:37 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 642 | 135 | 330 | 465 | +11 | 164 | 29 | 2 | 19 | 1846 | 7.3 | 24:12 |
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
22 goals and 59 assists in 75 games — 81 points, plus-7, at 26:37 a night, which is the heaviest workload of any player in this book.
The Finesse Game
An elite offensive defenceman in the middle of the best stretch of his career. The skating carries the puck out of danger and into the attacking zone, and the passing is the reason 59 assists arrived from a club that finished 24th on the power play.
382 unblocked attempts — more than most forwards — from a median of 43 feet, with 59 per cent from beyond 40. 23 goals came out of it, which for a point shot is a remarkable conversion and reflects how well he gets pucks through.
The Physical Game
6-2, 214, and he defends adequately rather than punishingly. 18 penalty minutes in 75 games of 26-minute nights is exceptional discipline.
He is not clearing his crease. On a club that finished 30th on the penalty kill, that is worth noticing.
The Intangibles
The most striking gap in this edition. He was on the ice for 55 per cent of the expected goals, 88th percentile, and the expected goals ran 78.0 to 63.9 in his favour. The actual goals went 81-66 against.
That is a shortfall of roughly 29 goals in 1 season, for 1 player, and it is the largest in this book. Some of it is Columbus finishing 4 goals below expectation as a club. Most of it is simply a season’s worth of pucks not going in when he was on the ice.
He is 29. 81 points from a defenceman is a Norris-calibre season, and the plus-7 beside it is a lie in the other direction.
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
55.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 49.3% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.7, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
21:01 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,576 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55%
- 88th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.9%
- 86th 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: 81 for, 66 against. Expected: 78.0 and 63.9.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 7 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 — 82 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 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 94th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.64 a game
- Distance
- 3.85 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.3 mph
- 80th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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
7
points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 4 assists, 39 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1576 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
- CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.0% — 3.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,576 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Fantilli | 56.0% | 54.4% | 49.4% |
| Kirill Marchenko | 54.6% | 55.1% | 51.4% |
| Cole Sillinger | 59.5% | 53.3% | 46.8% |
56.0% together, 54.4% for him apart and 49.4% for Fantilli apart. Fantilli was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Fantilli 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
382 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 23 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 58% from beyond forty.