Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 30?
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 goals4 × 3+12
- proj assists12 × 1+12
- PP points0 × 0.5+0
- game-winning goals0 × 0.5+0
- OT goals0 × 0.25+0
- shots80 × 0.1+8
- PIM0 × 0.05+0
- ice time (min)1728 × 0.01+17.3
- total49 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 16649 = 30/100
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 49 points is 30 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 (19 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 — 15 of 15 for CGY.
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 • −0.1
- TRADE VALUE: AT PACE — trade value is what the numbers say it is.
- 5.6% shooting on 18 shots against HIS OWN career baseline of 5.8% (411 shots before this season) — that's 0.1 goals below what his shot volume normally buys for him (1.1 expected goals). on pace. His shrunk talent rate is 5.8%, worth PD −0.1 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% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | Golden Knights | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16:42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2019-20 | Golden Knights | 16 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14:19 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2020-21 | Golden Knights | 51 | 2 | 10 | 12 | 9 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17:49 | 1 | 0 | 54 | 3.7% | 0.0% |
| 2021-22 | Golden Knights | 59 | 8 | 11 | 19 | 21 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 18:48 | 1 | 0 | 94 | 8.5% | 0.0% |
| 2022-23 | Golden Knights | 59 | 5 | 7 | 12 | 10 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17:07 | 1 | 0 | 64 | 7.8% | 0.0% |
| 2023-24 | Golden Knights | 61 | 2 | 12 | 14 | -3 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17:35 | 1 | 0 | 51 | 3.9% | 0.0% |
| 2024-25 | Golden Knights | 74 | 4 | 9 | 13 | 7 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17:31 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 5.6% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Golden Knights | 47 | 2 | 5 | 7 | -8 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18:46 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 6.1% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Flames | 31 | 0 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22:40 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Flames | 19 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20:34 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 5.6% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Flames | 84 | 4 | 12 | 16 | — | 18 | — | 0 | — | 19:59 | — | — | 90 | — | — |
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 29 that is -1%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Comparable player-seasons: Erik Gudbranson (2025-25) · Brett Pesce (2025-25) · Jeremy Lauzon (2025-25) · Troy Stecher (2025-25) · Connor Clifton (2025-25).
Goals — with the line
| Time | ST | Type | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 8 · vs PHI | |||||
| P2 05:59 | EV | Goal | Whitecloud (Suniev, Sharangovich) → 2-2 | Backlund · Frost · Farabee · Sharangovich · Klapka · Suniev Hanley · Middleton · Whitecloud · Nemec | Dvorak · Konecny · Tippett · Zegras · Foerster · Knuble Sanheim · York · Drysdale · Bonk Vladar (G) |
| Nov 4 · @ SEA | |||||
| P1 12:45 | EV | Assist | Sharangovich (Whitecloud, Frost) → 1-0 | Frost · Sharangovich · Stromgren · Klapka · Castagna · Suniev Middleton · Whitecloud · Bahl · Nemec | Stephenson · Gaudreau · Winterton · Nyman · Meyers · Wood Larsson · Dunn · Mahura · Ottavainen Daccord (G) |
| Oct 30 · vs SEA | |||||
| P3 00:39 | EV | Assist | Coronato (#?) → 5-2 | Backlund · Farabee · Coronato · Gridin Kuznetsov · Nemec | Eberle · Stephenson · Gaudreau · McMann · Beniers · Samoskevich Montour · Dunn · Fleury · Evans Daccord (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Zach over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jacob Middleton CGY | 137 | 10 | |
| Mikael Backlund CGY | 88 | 10 | |
| Joel Farabee CGY | 73 | 10 | |
| Matt Coronato CGY | 61 | 10 | |
| Yegor Sharangovich CGY | 57 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats