2025 Report Card: Matt Duchene, king of the 82

Great regular season. The postseason...we'll let's dig in.

Original, non-AI artwork by Ryan Konzelman.

One Sentence Summary

Second line center, first line results.

A few good stats

• Cap: $4.5 million (Year 1 of 4)

• GP: 82

• Goals: 30

• Assists: 52

• Points: 82

• Postseason: 18 GP — 1 goals, 5 assists — 6 points

• xSPAR: 6.8 extra points in the standings

Don’t know what you’re looking at and need a filthy casual explainer? Click here to learn more about Evolving-Hockey’s Goals Above Replacement (GAR).

While the stats look quite binary — in the one percent of elite impacts on observed and expected goals, and the total opposite on defense — it’s hard to understate just what an offensive season Duchene had. Unlike the previous year, where his shift-to-shift rating looked extremely questionable, he didn’t have that issue this season. The asterisk on his expected goal plus-minus indicates Duchene was above Evolving-Hockey’s preset threshold. When it came to generating shot quality, Duchene left earth. His WAR rating calculated over three wins for the year. Only Jason Robertson and Thomas Harley were higher. As for games post-82, well…we’ll get to that.