Sam Rinzel
Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 42?
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 goals6 × 3+18
- proj assists21 × 1+21
- PP points5 × 0.5+2.5
- game-winning goals0 × 0.5+0
- OT goals0 × 0.25+0
- shots109 × 0.1+10.9
- PIM49 × 0.05+2.5
- ice time (min)1450 × 0.01+14.5
- total69 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 16669 = 42/100
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 69 points is 42 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 — 14 of 14 for CHI.
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 • −0.2
- TRADE VALUE: AT PACE — trade value is what the numbers say it is.
- 4.5% shooting on 22 shots against HIS OWN career baseline of 5.4% (105 shots before this season) — that's 0.2 goals below what his shot volume normally buys for him (1.2 expected goals). on pace. His shrunk talent rate is 5.2%, worth PD −0.2 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% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | Blackhawks | 9 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 23:22 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Blackhawks | 54 | 4 | 10 | 14 | -7 | 44 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 18:16 | 1 | 0 | 83 | 4.8% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Blackhawks | 18 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -3 | 14 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 17:31 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Blackhawks | 84 | 6 | 21 | 27 | — | 50 | — | 3 | — | 18:01 | — | — | 105 | — | — |
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 22 that is 2%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Goals — with the line
| Date | Opp | Type | When | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 12 | vs BUF | Assist | 08:22 · P3 · EV | Nazar (Rinzel, Moore) → 2-2 | Moore · Kane · Nazar Rinzel · Cole | Zucker · Quinn · Ostlund Zellweger · Crevier Lyon (G) |
| Nov 12 | vs BUF | Assist | 03:12 · P4 · EV | Donato (Frondell, Rinzel) → 3-2 | Donato · Moore · Frondell · Greene · Smith · Mangiapane · Bertuzzi · Kantserov · Kane · Nazar · Bedard Rinzel · Cole · Mastro · Kaiser · Levshunov · Vlasic | Norris · Ostlund Power Lyon (G) |
| Nov 5 | @ TBL | Assist | 19:10 · P3 · EV | Kantserov (Rinzel, Del Mastro) → 1-4 | Bertuzzi · Kantserov · Bedard Rinzel · Del Mastro | Point · Kucherov · Mikheyev D'Astous · Carlson Vasilevskiy (G) |
| Nov 4 | @ FLA | Assist | 16:09 · P3 · EV | Nazar (Rinzel, Bedard) → 3-4 | Frondell · Kantserov · Nazar · Bedard Rinzel | Bennett · Verhaeghe · Vilmanis Jones · Forsling Markstrom (G) |
| Oct 31 | @ BOS | Assist | 03:31 · P2 · EV | Frondell (Bertuzzi, Rinzel) → 2-1 | Frondell · Mangiapane · Bertuzzi Rinzel · Mastro | Kastelic · Kuraly · Jeannot Lohrei · Aspirot DiPietro (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Sam over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wyatt Kaiser CHI | 73 | 10 | |
| Connor Bedard CHI | 62 | 9 | |
| Roman Kantserov CHI | 60 | 10 | |
| Oliver Moore CHI | 52 | 10 | |
| Tyler Bertuzzi CHI | 49 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats