Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 69?
Each row is one fantasy category turned into points over a full 84-game season. Add the rows up and that is his total fantasy worth.
- proj goals13 × 3+39
- proj assists29 × 1+29
- PP points8 × 0.5+4
- game-winning goals0 × 0.5+0
- OT goals0 × 0.25+0
- shots206 × 0.1+20.6
- PIM34 × 0.05+1.7
- ice time (min)2042 × 0.01+20.4
- total115 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 166115 = 69/100
Weights follow what the average fantasy league actually counts: goals at 3× assists (the universal core), power-play points and game-winners at half weight (common extra categories), OT goals, shots and PIM small (many leagues skip them), and ice time as a quiet availability bonus. The scale: add up a whole season of those categories and compare against the best defensemen in the NHL — an elite season scores about 166 points, and that is what 100 means. So 115 points is 69 out of a perfect fantasy season at his position. Defensemen and forwards are graded on separate scales because the D slot can only be filled by a defenseman. Goals and assists come from the backtested season model; the rest ride your own season-to-date pace over 84 games (20 games so far). Hits/blocks are excluded: the free NHL feeds don't publish full-season totals, and we don't invent them.
The Situation
- Cold window: 3.3 pts/10 over the last 6 vs 10.0/10 baseline — pace has fallen off.
- Every night: in the lineup for all of the team's last 10 games.
- Availability: every game this season — 15 of 15 for WPG.
Every line is measured from our own boxscore ledger; absence reasons from the NHL Status Report and our transaction wire only — no insider guessing.
Finishing check overperforming O/U ▲ +3.3
- TRADE VALUE: ABOVE PACE — mildly. A good offer now prices in shooting luck most leagues won't keep paying for.
- 8.2% shooting on 49 shots against HIS OWN career baseline of 4.6% (1057 shots before this season) — that's 1.7 goals above what his shot volume normally buys for him (2.3 expected goals). over pace. His shrunk talent rate is 6.2%, worth PD +3.3 goals per 84 over/under his own standard.
- His regular linemates run hot too (Samberg 13.6%, Connor 18.8%, Scheifele 14.0%, Vilardi 5.1%) — this reads as a line effect, not a finishing skill spike. When the line cools, his assists cool with it.
Model: goals vs shot volume vs live league position baselines; talent SH% is an empirical-Bayes shrinkage of the season…
His shooting talent is estimated by shrinking his season shooting percentage toward his league position mean in proportion to sample size (kappa pseudo-shots prior), then projecting the gap over 84 games at his current shot volume. Small samples stay near zero — the number only moves when the evidence does.
The method follows published hockey-analytics research: a shooter is judged against his own career shooting percentage, because a player's own career rate predicts his next goals better than any league average (“Expected by Whom? A Skill-Adjusted Expected Goals Model for NHL Shooters and Goaltenders,” arXiv:2511.07703). Thin careers (rookies) shrink toward the league mean for the position, and the season number is shrunk toward the player's own anchor with empirical-Bayes weights — Nandakumar & Jensen (2019), Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, doi:10.1146/annurev-statistics-030718-105202. This section is about the gap between luck and his pace, not talent.
Season stats
NHL regular-season totals, season by season. The 84-G proj line is our public model’s season-length forecast — frozen 2026-11-13, the day this projection was first published — it does not slide with later results; methodology in the caption below the table.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | P | +/- | PIM | PPG | PPP | SHG | TOI/GP | GWG | OTG | S | S% | FOW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | Rangers | 28 | 1 | 13 | 14 | -1 | 12 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 22:23 | 0 | 0 | 54 | 1.8% | 0.0% |
| 2018-19 | Rangers | 73 | 6 | 20 | 26 | -16 | 35 | 2 | 13 | 0 | 21:10 | 1 | 0 | 132 | 4.5% | 0.0% |
| 2019-20 | Jets | 71 | 6 | 39 | 45 | 10 | 32 | 3 | 25 | 0 | 23:23 | 1 | 0 | 177 | 3.4% | 0.0% |
| 2020-21 | Jets | 54 | 3 | 29 | 32 | 6 | 20 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 21:58 | 0 | 0 | 100 | 3.0% | 0.0% |
| 2021-22 | Jets | 77 | 3 | 31 | 34 | 5 | 46 | 1 | 12 | 0 | 21:08 | 1 | 0 | 140 | 2.1% | 0.0% |
| 2022-23 | Jets | 82 | 10 | 23 | 33 | -12 | 44 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 21:56 | 2 | 2 | 142 | 7.0% | 0.0% |
| 2023-24 | Jets | 82 | 5 | 28 | 33 | 9 | 63 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 20:50 | 1 | 0 | 146 | 3.4% | 0.0% |
| 2024-25 | Jets | 69 | 10 | 29 | 39 | 21 | 44 | 4 | 12 | 0 | 22:04 | 2 | 1 | 123 | 8.1% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Jets | 51 | 3 | 9 | 12 | 1 | 37 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 22:43 | 1 | 0 | 97 | 3.1% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Jets | 20 | 4 | 8 | 12 | -3 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 24:18 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 8.2% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Jets | 84 | 13 | 29 | 42 | — | 39 | — | 4 | — | 22:21 | — | — | 164 | — | — |
84-G proj — pace at first publication blended with the player's own history (recent seasons weighted heaviest), mixed with a similarity projection from historical players with comparable profiles, then adjusted for the aging curve (league-average peak at 27; decline after) — at age 31 that is -3%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Comparable player-seasons: Hampus Lindholm (2025-25) · Drew Doughty (2025-25) · Ryan McDonagh (2025-25) · Brandon Montour (2025-25) · Damon Severson (2025-25).
Goals — with the line
| Time | ST | Type | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 8 · vs TBLW 4-30 G1 A1 PTS1 SOG0 ±27:15 TOI | |||||
| P2 12:38 | EV | Assist | Barron (Pionk, Björck) → 2-0 | Vilardi · Barron · Björck Samberg · Pionk | Gourde · Holmberg · Geekie Cernak · D'Astous Vasilevskiy (G) |
Nov 5 · vs VANW 6-21 G0 A1 PTS3 SOG0 ±24:31 TOI | |||||
| P2 06:52 | EV | Goal | Pionk (Connor, Vilardi) → 4-1 | Scheifele · Connor · Vilardi Samberg · Pionk | Gallagher · Cotter · Quillan Hronek · Pettersson Merilainen (G) |
Oct 30 · @ FLAL 2-50 G1 A1 PTS4 SOG-2 ±23:42 TOI | |||||
| P2 09:51 | PP | Assist | Connor (Scheifele, Pionk) → 1-2 | Scheifele · Connor · Vilardi · Perfetti Pionk | Eller · Tkachuk Jones · Forsling · Mikkola Schmid (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Neal over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dylan Samberg WPG | 169 | 10 | |
| Kyle Connor WPG | 107 | 10 | |
| Mark Scheifele WPG | 105 | 10 | |
| Gabriel Vilardi WPG | 88 | 10 | |
| Cole Perfetti WPG | 85 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats