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

Zachary Aston-Reese

17 points, a minus-15, and a fourth-line winger who took 48 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet.

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

2017-18	PIT	16	4	2	6	+2	2	0	0	1	20	20.0	11:23
2018-19	PIT	43	8	9	17	+12	26	0	1	1	76	10.5	13:39
2019-20	PIT	57	6	7	13	+6	28	0	1	0	98	6.1	14:25
2020-21	PIT	45	9	6	15	+10	15	0	1	0	79	11.4	14:37
2021-22	PIT/ANA	69	5	10	15	+9	28	0	0	0	78	6.4	13:02
2022-23	TOR	77	10	4	14	-6	25	0	0	2	89	11.2	10:56
2023-24	DET	3	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	1	0.0	5:09
2024-25	CBJ	79	6	11	17	-15	27	0	0	1	101	5.9	13:27
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	389	48	49	97	+18	153	0	3	5	542	8.9	13:02

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

6 goals and 11 assists in 79 games for 17 points, minus-15 — the worst rating on the club — on 13:27 a night.

48.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 38th percentile, which is a perfectly reasonable share and sits oddly with the rating. His on-ice goals were 28-46 against an expected 34-36, so the five-on-five results were good; the minus-15 came elsewhere.

The Finesse Game

Limited. 101 shots and 6 goals at 5.9 per cent, and 11 assists — there is no finishing here and never has been.

48 per cent of his attempts came from inside 20 feet, so the locations are right and the hands are not. He is on a roster to defend and to forecheck, and the offence is incidental.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 203, and he plays a hard, honest, physical game. He blocks shots, finishes checks, and is one of the more reliable defensive forwards on the club.

27 penalty minutes over 79 games is disciplined for the style.

The Intangibles

Undrafted out of Northeastern, five organisations, and an NHL career built on being trusted defensively.

At 31 the projection is unchanged: a fourth-line winger who kills penalties. The minus-15 should not be held against him — the underlying five-on-five play was among the better bottom-six numbers on the roster.

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.

durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted out of Northeastern, five organisations, and an NHL career built on being trusted defensively.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots, finishes checks, and is one of the more reliable defensive forwards on the club.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He blocks shots, finishes checks, and is one of the more reliable defensive forwards on the club.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He blocks shots, finishes checks, and is one of the more reliable defensive forwards on the club.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He is on a roster to defend and to forecheck, and the offence is incidental.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“At 31 the projection is unchanged: a fourth-line winger who kills penalties.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 905 minutes

Expected goals: 48.4%; 38th pct
Shot attempts: 46.5%; 21st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 28 for, 46 against. Expected: 34.2 and 36.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

42nd

Numbers

38th

The two rank him within 4 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 — 71 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 · 79 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 72nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.63 a game
Distance: 2.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.3 mph; 47th 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 · 905 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 48.4% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 905 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mathieu Olivier	48.3%	48.5%	44.6%
Justin Danforth	53.5%	44.4%	43.6%
Zach Werenski	55.5%	43.3%	52.9%

48.3% together, 48.5% for him apart and 44.6% for Olivier apart. Olivier was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Olivier 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

135 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.