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

Zach Werenski

82 points and 26:45 a night, and the largest single-season workload by any defenceman in this edition.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	567	113	271	384	+4	146	25	2	17	1586	7.1	23:53

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

23 goals and 59 assists in 81 games for 82 points, plus-12, on 26:45 a night — the heaviest workload of any skater in the league — and 298 shots.

53.5 per cent at five-on-five, the 81st percentile, over 1,650 five-on-five minutes, which is more than any other player in this edition. His on-ice goals were 81-62 against an expected 76-66: nine goals of finishing and goaltending added to the top of a season that was unarguable anyway.

The Finesse Game

The best offensive defenceman in the league last season by production and close to it by play. The skating is powerful rather than dazzling — he beats a forecheck by going through the space rather than around it — and he carries out of his own zone as a matter of routine.

298 shots from the blue line is an enormous volume and 23 goals from them is a genuine release, not a deflection total. 59 assists is where the value concentrates: he walks the line, holds it until a killer commits, and finds the man arriving. There is nothing in the puck game he cannot do.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 214, and he is willing rather than punishing. He defends his net front adequately, takes contact to make a play, and does not hunt hits.

31 penalty minutes over 81 games playing nearly 27 a night is excellent discipline. The larger physical question is what 1,650 five-on-five minutes does to a 28-year-old, and whether a club with this little depth behind him can keep asking.

The Intangibles

Nine seasons in one organisation, through a rebuild, a retool, and the death of a teammate before the season began. He played the best hockey of his life in the year that followed.

At 28 he is a genuine top-three defenceman in the league on a club that has made the playoffs twice in his career. The contract runs long and the workload is not sustainable; the club has to find a second pairing that can take 20 of his minutes.

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
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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
18.0% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
81 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
53.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 44.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +9.4, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
20:22 a game at five-on-five, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“he carries out of his own zone as a matter of routine.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“59 assists is where the value concentrates: he walks the line, holds it until a killer commits, and finds the man arriving.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-2 and 214, and he is willing rather than punishing.”
clears-the-creasepresent and ordinary· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He defends his net front adequately, takes contact to make a play, and does not hunt hits.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,650 minutes

Expected goals: 53.5%; 82nd pct
Shot attempts: 52.8%; 81st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 81 for, 62 against. Expected: 75.9 and 66.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

96th

Numbers

82nd

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 — 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, 2024-25 · 81 games

Top speed: 23.1 mph; 93rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.00 a game
Distance: 3.95 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.9 mph; 60th 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 · 1650 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: CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.5% — 5.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,650 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dante Fabbro	53.4%	53.6%	48.8%
Kirill Marchenko	56.2%	51.7%	49.5%
Adam Fantilli	52.3%	54.0%	39.1%

53.4% together, 53.6% for him apart and 48.8% for Fabbro apart. Fabbro was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Fabbro 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

428 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 23 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 54% from beyond forty.