10 Interesting (To Me) Stats For This Week - June 2, 2026

Welcome back to another week of ’10 Interesting (To Me) Stats’.

This week, we’re using tracking data from All Three Zones to see changes in offensive shooting profiles from defencemen at 5-on-5. The focus will be specifically on shots off the rush and shots off the forecheck/cycle. We are going to evaluate what defencemen did in 2025-26 and compare that to the two seasons from 2023-25. The sample will be rearguards with at least 300 tracked minutes from 2023-25 and 150 tracked minutes in 2025-26, giving us 152 blue liners. A couple things before we start.

First, we are using the percentage change in 60-minute rates. So, if Roman Josi averaged 2.0 rush shots per 60 minutes from 2023-25, and that increased to 3.0 rush shots per 60 minutes in 2025-26, the change is +50%. If he declined to 1.0 rush shots/60 minutes, the change is -50%.

Second, because league-wide rates change each season, we are factoring those changes into each player’s number. If the league-wide difference in rush shots/60 minutes by defencemen is +5% compared to 2023-25, then that number is subtracted from each player. We could drill down to team-specific differences, but for now, let’s focus on league-wide trends.

The red and blue lines in the graphs represent the league-wide change in rush shots (red) and cycle+forecheck shots (blue) in 2025-26 compared to 2023-25.

1 – Darren Raddysh (Tampa Bay Lightning)

Coming off a season where Raddysh scored as many goals at 5-on-5 in 73 games (9) as he did across the prior 176 games of his career, it should be no surprise that he was one of the few defencemen who saw large increases in his shots off the rush and off the cycle/forecheck:

His overall shot volume increased (even when factoring in his increased ice time), his shot quality increased, and he ramped up the two areas of offence at 5-on-5. There is something to be said about playing over half his 5-on-5 ice time with at least one of, if not both of, Nikita Kucherov or Brandon Hagel on the ice, but if he re-signs with Tampa Bay, there’s no reason why he can’t have a similar performance.

2 – Lane Hutson (Montreal Canadiens)

The other player with a significant rise in both his rate of shots off the rush and off the cycle/forecheck was Montreal’s superstar blue liner:

The funny thing about Hutson is that unlike Raddysh, he did not improve his overall shot volume at 5-on-5, per Evolving Hockey. What he did was massively improve his shot quality as his individual expected goal rate increased by a whopping 60%. That shows up when we see his huge increase in both shots off the rush and cycle/forecheck. He wasn’t wasting shots from 45+ feet as much as he did as a rookie, and continued improvement in that area will make him a genuine scoring threat.

3 – Morgan Rielly (Toronto Maple Leafs)

Whatever is said about Rielly’s defensive play – most of it correct – he is the most talented offensive defenceman Toronto has. In 2025-26, he had his highest 5-on-5 goal total in seven years, and when we see his shot improvements, that makes sense:

It will be interesting to see what happens to Rielly next season. Head Coach Craig Berube was fired, the team has a new General Manager, and including the postseason, Rielly has over 1000 NHL games played. Will the new coach use him on the power play? What will his role be? Can he maintain these new shot levels as he ages? A lot of questions that can’t be answered but it makes him a fascinating player to keep tabs on for 2026-27.

4 – Tyler Kleven (Ottawa Senators)

When we think of offensive defencemen from Ottawa, Kleven is not the first, second, or even third name we probably think of. All the same, of the 152 defencemen in our sample, he had by far the largest increase in shots off the rush, and added a decent increase of shots off the cycle/forecheck to go with it:

Kleven’s shot improvements weren’t followed by an improvement in goal scoring, and this is a guy known more for his defensive play, but aside from the shots, he showed genuine offensive improvements. He just turned 24 years old in January and only has 174 total NHL games, so while this level of improvement in shots off the rush won’t hold, if he can keep adding to his offensive profile while maintaining his solid defensive play, there is a nice depth option brewing here for the Sens.

5 – Pavel Mintyukov (Anaheim Ducks)

Following a solid rookie 2023-24 season, it seems as if Mintyukov has lessened his offensive involvement to improve his defensive play. The results have been a mixed bag, but he clearly tried to get a lot more involved off the rush in 2025-26:

There might be a reason why Mintyukov’s defensive impact didn’t really improve when compared to his first two seasons, but it was his first year under a new coach, and he won’t turn 23 years old until November. He is a work in progress, but he’s clearly trying to put together his wealth of skills to make a more complete, consistent player.

6 – Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling (Florida Panthers)

We are going to show these two on the same chart because they were Florida’s top pair who skated a lot of minutes together:

It should be mentioned that Florida, as a team, took 11% fewer shots in 2025-26 than they did the year before, and we can chalk that up to injuries. However, the drops for both Ekblad and Forsling in both shot categories were at least 2x larger than the drop for the team overall, so maybe there’s a genuine shift in how the team’s top blue liners are approaching their offensive involvement. We won’t know until the games start next season.

7 – Roman Josi (Nashville Predators)

Father Time waits for no one, and Josi’s rate of goals per game over the last two seasons has declined by 53% when compared to the three years prior. He turned 36 years old yesterday and when we see his shot declines, maybe he’s coming to the end of the road:

There was a modest increase in shots off the rush, but a substantial drop in shots off the cycle/forecheck, and that led to his lowest 5-on-5 shot volume in a decade. He will put up good totals if he keeps skating 24-25 minutes a game, but it’s fair to wonder if this heralds the true end-of-career decline that comes for all players.

8 – Philip Broberg (St. Louis Blues)

It was a weird year for Broberg, who saw a much bigger role and had good improvements in some other tracking data, but his shots off the rush and cycle/forecheck went in opposite directions:

Unlike Mintyukov, Broberg had a solid improvement in his defensive impacts despite jumping into the rush so much. That is a rarity, and if he can get his shots off the cycle/forecheck to improve, we are looking at one of the more well-rounded defencemen in the league, especially among those under 25 years old.

9 – Dylan Samberg (Winnipeg Jets)

In a lost season for the Jets, what shouldn’t be lost is that despite Samberg missing the first month with an injury, he improved his defensive impact, and it’s a wonder if that happened because he abandoned his shots off the rush to focus on the cycle/forecheck:

The other effect of abandoning shots off the rush is that Samberg did not score a single goal at 5-on-5 in 2025-26 after having scored five the year before (in 139 fewer minutes). He is the key cog of Winnipeg’s blue line after the Josh Morrissey pair, and he’ll need to have more offensive impact to go with his excellent defence if the team wants to return to the postseason.

10 – Mason Lohrei (Boston Bruins)

Lohrei is a fascinating player because he has a lot of offensive skill and stands 6’5”. That is a rare combination, but his lack of defence and consistency has made him unreliable. It seems he tried to lessen his offensive involvement in 2025-26 to work on that defence because his shots off the rush declined substantially:

This helped his defensive impact, but he is still not being trusted by his coaches. All the same, Lohrei’s unique combination means he’ll get more runway to figure it out, and if he can balance his offence and defence, he can be an impact blue liner for Boston’s depth.

Until next week.