Matthew Schaefer
Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 100?
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 goals20 × 3+60
- proj assists50 × 1+50
- PP points25 × 0.5+12.5
- game-winning goals5 × 0.5+2.5
- OT goals5 × 0.25+1.3
- shots306 × 0.1+30.6
- PIM59 × 0.05+3
- ice time (min)2271 × 0.01+22.7
- total183 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 166183 = 100/100
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 183 points is 100 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 (17 games so far — small sample, secondary lines will move as roles settle). Hits/blocks are excluded: the free NHL feeds don't publish full-season totals, and we don't invent them.
The Situation
- Every night: in the lineup for all of the team's last 10 games.
- Availability: every game this season — 13 of 13 for NYI.
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 on pace O/U ▲ +2.4
- TRADE VALUE: AT PACE — trade value is what the numbers say it is.
- 8.1% shooting on 62 shots against a league defenceman baseline of 6.5% — no career track record yet — that's 1.0 goals above what his shot volume normally buys for him (4.0 expected goals). on pace. His shrunk talent rate is 7.3%, worth PD +2.4 goals per 84 over/under his own standard.
- His goals track his shot volume almost exactly — what you see is what you have.
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 extends the current season with our public model — methodology in the caption below the table.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | P | +/- | PIM | PPG | PPP | SHG | TOI/GP | GWG | OTG | S | S% | FOW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-26 | Islanders | 82 | 23 | 36 | 59 | 13 | 38 | 8 | 18 | 0 | 24:41 | 4 | 2 | 222 | 10.4% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Islanders | 18 | 6 | 12 | 18 | -4 | 12 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 27:02 | 1 | 1 | 65 | 9.2% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Islanders | 84 | 20 | 50 | 70 | — | 55 | — | 22 | — | 23:45 | — | — | 216 | — | — |
84-G proj — current pace 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 19 that is 4%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Goals — with the line
| Time | ST | Type | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 9 · @ SJS | |||||
| P2 01:11 | PP | Assist | Eklund (Schenn, Schaefer) → 2-1 | Schenn · Horvat · Holmstrom · Eklund Schaefer | Dellandrea · Graf Trouba · Nurse Askarov (G) |
| Nov 7 · vs NJD | |||||
| P1 17:14 | EV | Goal | #? (Horvat, Heineman) → 2-1 | Palmieri · Horvat · Heineman Stanley | Meier · Hischier · Evangelista Hamilton · Siegenthaler Allen (G) |
| Nov 5 · vs CAR | |||||
| P2 03:40 | EV | Assist | #? (Schaefer, Cizikas) → 1-2 | Cizikas · MacLean Stanley · Schaefer | Martinook · Carrier · Kotkaniemi Slavin · Chatfield Bussi (G) |
| Oct 29 · @ MIN | |||||
| P1 16:36 | EV | Goal | Schaefer (Heineman, Eklund) → 1-1 | Schenn · Heineman · Eklund Stanley · Schaefer | Kaprizov · Yurov · Shabanov Bogosian · Hughes Wallstedt (G) |
| P2 01:41 | PP | Assist | Horvat (Holmstrom, Schaefer) → 2-1 | Palmieri · Schenn · Horvat · Holmstrom Schaefer | Coleman · McCarron Brodin · Kiersted Wallstedt (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Matthew over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logan Stanley NYI | 127 | 10 | |
| Bo Horvat NYI | 117 | 10 | |
| Kyle Palmieri NYI | 95 | 10 | |
| Brayden Schenn NYI | 94 | 10 | |
| Simon Holmstrom NYI | 88 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats