Vitals
Player: Matt Grzelcyk
Born: Jan 5, 1994 (Age 30/31 season)
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 180 pounds
Hometown: Charlestown, MA, USA
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2012 third round (85th overall) by the Boston Bruins
Acquired: Free agent signing
2024-25 Statistics: 82 games played, 1 goal, 39 assists = 40 points
Contract Status: Set to be an unrestricted free agent on July 1
Monthly Splits
Grzelcyk was consistent with chipping in assists on a regular basis all season long. One interesting angle is his icetime was at it’s lowest level in February before dramatically ratcheting up for the last two months of the year after the trade deadline.
Story of the Season
Matt Grzelcyk came to Pittsburgh looking for a career restart. The first 30 years of his life were incredibly Boston-centric; he was born there, spent his time at college at BU and played his whole career up to that point with the hometown Bruins. As time went on, Grzelcyk slid down the depth chart into being a spare part and signed a one-year deal with the Penguins on July 1st, 2024.
It was a good match in the sense that the Pens needed help on the blueline and Grzelcyk needed a roster to be on. He found a spot in the top-four all season long, flipping between partnering with Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson in 2024-25, averaging a career-high 20:39 of icetime per game.
The results were mixed. On the plus side, Grzelcyk set and in some areas shattered his career bests with 39 assists, 40 points, 101 blocked shots and 15 power play points (all assists). He fit in well as a puck distributor from the blueline. The bigger role also hurt in terms of visibly demonstrating Grzelcyk’s deficiencies defensively. Despite having all impending free agents available at the deadline, Grzelcyk stayed in Pittsburgh as a result of lack of interest for a contending team taking him on.
So after one year, it’s fair to wonder how the restart went. Grzelcyk looks great if you leave it at the assists and points columns, but further introspection or review reveals a limited player who can offer some positives at the NHL level but in a more limited and sheltered role than he had in Pittsburgh.
Regular season 5v5 advanced stats
Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of 11 defensemen on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.
Corsi For%: 50.0% (5th)
Goals For%: 48.8% (2nd)
xGF%: 47.6% (8th)
Scoring Chance %: 48.0% (8th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 46.6% (9th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 9.5% (4th)
On-ice save%: .905% (6th)
Goals/60: 0.04 (8th)
Assist/60: 0.97 (2nd)
Points/60: 1.01 (4th)
The real results with Grzelcyk on the ice (48.8% goal share) exceeded expectations (47.6%), so that’s nice. Could have been uglier based on the splits of the scoring chances allowed. The feather in his cap was generating assists and points at an impressive rate considering he also logged a lot of minutes.
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
Grzelcyk has been ineffective at 5v5 for several years now as his career has eroded. He was able to bounce back from last year’s disastrous EV defense impact due to a strong end to this season, but overall it’s not a pretty picture. He shouldn’t be in a role playing against tough competition, but he can move the puck very well and create assists.
Grzelcyk does a few very things very well and then has severe limitations everywhere else. He can move the puck while in the o-zone and is surprisingly still good with his gap control when it comes to denying zone entries. Other than that Grzelcyk is terrible at retrieving the puck, and though he racks up a lot of assists he doesn’t pass to create chances and he’s very poor at zone exits. Grzelcyk is a good facilitator of the puck once the team is setup in the offensive zone, but he doesn’t offer a lot in helping get out of the d-zone or into the o-zone.
One important item is 82: playing a full season was no easy task. Grzelcyk absorbed several late/dirty hits, one from NYR’s Matt Rempe and another from TB’s Brandon Hagel that left him crumpled on the ice. But he was able to dust himself off and not miss time, which is a testament to toughness. Due to appearing in all the games, Grzelcyk was able to put up good stats relative to the other players in the league.
Getting around the ice was OK but had a ceiling. Grzelcyk as a young player was very fast, feisty and competitive with the Bruins. By now age-31, that top-end speed is gone. He measures in a good percentile due to sheer volume of games and minutes played but lacks a burst.
Highlights
Sadly it’s not readily available to find Grzelcyk assists. Not too many highlight reel passes anyways but certainly a high quantity of them!
Questions to ponder
Whether or not the Penguins should or shouldn’t be interested in Grzelcyk is about all there is to consider at this point. There are reasonable items in the pro and con columns there.
On the plus side, Grzelcyk shouldn’t be expensive or come with a multi-year commitment – and in essence help the Pens log some minutes to get through another season. Maybe even be able to trade him near next deadline if his play improves from where it was this past year.
On the con side, keeping a veteran like Grzelcyk would be traffic in the way of a younger player like Owen Pickering or Vladislav Kolyachonok seeing NHL time next season. The team already has players like Ryan Graves and Ryan Shea on the left side depth chart.
Ideal 2025-26
For Grzelcyk, getting a call from the Penguins about an extension would be an ideal for him. He fit well enough on the ice and gets to play a lot more than he would just about anywhere else. He hadn’t gotten that call as of mid-April and that might not be in the cards.
For the Pens, it depends on what they want 2025-26 to be. If they don’t want to be competitive, bringing back Grzelcyk in a top-four role would help the team sink back to the bottom of the standings. If they aim to improve, they will need more quality defenders.
Bottom line
Matt Grzelcyk did some good things out there but was way in over his head and also struggled at the same time. Can’t knock the effort and it wasn’t all bad but in the end it appears Boston was completely right to consider him no longer wanting to hang onto. Whether the Pens decide the same likely has more to do with bigger picture concerns of scraping through another dreary season or not.
Poll
How would you grade Matt Grzelcyk’s 2024-25 season?