Spotlight on Matthew Schaefer

In this week's newsletter, we explored the usefulness of the NHLe metric, which is a general metric that translates non-NHL league statistics into NHL potential.

Matthew Schaefer was taken first overall in the 2025 NHL Draft. According to NHL.COM:

Schaefer (6-foot-2, 186 pounds) is the second player from Erie to be chosen No. 1 and first since center Connor McDavid was picked by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2015 NHL Draft.

Hockey DB lays out Schaefer's stats. In 17 OHL games, he posted 22 points (7 goals, 15 assists) and carried a plus-21 rating — despite a season shortened by injury (a broken clavicle and earlier mononucleosis) and personal tragedy (he lost his mother in 2024). You can see his OHL stats alongside the first 3 games of his NHL career below.

Not a member? Join Data Punk Hockey today to level up your hockey analytics skills!

There were sceptics who said 17 games were too small a sample size to justify the halo around Schaefer, but while he's only three games in, he's posting impressive stats: a 1.0 Points per Game (0.67 Assists per Game and 0.33 Goals per Game), 13 Shots on Goal with a 7.7 Shot Percentage. His Giveaway to Takeaway ratio is also sitting at the league average of 3. Again, early, but a good start.

The Bleacher Report broke Schaefer's game down and described him as follows:

Schaefer is a valuable offensive contributor off the rush. With his speed, he is able to jump into plays and the ability to cover ground on the backcheck means he is able to take risks.

While he's having a good start, his challenge will be integrating into an NHL defensive corps under the spotlight, adapting to faster rushes, and managing matchups against top forwards. And it's early in the season; most teams aren't closing in on another yet (save for Tampa Lightening on Florida Panthers).

If we applied a simple NHLe translation (let’s say ~35 % of his OHL points as a baseline), those 22 points could project to ~7–8 NHL points in a limited role — but that’s only a starting estimate that doesn’t capture defensive value or usage. Assuming a continued growth path, he'll far outperform this projection. In this sense, the NHLe is underestimating Schaefer's current performance.

Sign up to get free access to more weekly content and courseware on all things Hockey Analytics.