Graves didn’t do much in his second season in the black and gold to silence his already vociferous critics.
Vitals
Player: Ryan Graves
Born: May 21, 1995 (30 years old)
Height: 6-foot-5
Weight: 222 pounds
Hometown: Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
Shoots: Left
Draft: Round 4 (No. 110 overall), 2013, New York Rangers
2024-25 Statistics: 61 games played; one goal; three assists; four points; +/- -15
Contract Status: Entering year three of a six-year, $27 million contract. Will have a cap hit of $4.5 million in 2025-26. Will be an unrestricted free agent after the 2028-29 season.
History: 2023-24: 47% F; 46% D
Monthly Splits
Yahoo! Sports
Story of the Season
It was not the great sophomore follow-up I’m sure Ryan Graves envisioned after a rocky 2023-24 debut season with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
His second season was, in a few ways, a continuation of his first. Graves began the season with Jack St. Ivany on the Penguins’ third defense pairing.
Repeat subpar performances saw Graves become a healthy scratch after an ugly 6-1 loss to the Utah Hockey Club on Nov. 23, 2024, and he would not see the ice again until Dec. 7.
After playing most of December and into the new year, Graves would again not play between Jan. 3 and Jan. 17, 2025.
Trading left-hander Marcus Pettersson to the Vancouver Canucks on Feb. 1 meant Graves saw more game action as the Penguins continued to flounder toward the end of another unremarkable season.
After scoring three goals and 11 points across 70 games last season, Graves registered his first and only goal of the 2024-25 campaign against the St. Louis Blues on March 13 as part of a 5-3 victory.
Regular season 5v5 advanced stats
Data via Natural Stat Trick. The ranking is out of 11 defensemen on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.
Corsi For%: 49.86 (6th)
Goals For%: 38.18 (9th)
xGF%: 51.07 (3rd)
Scoring Chance%: 48.74 (6th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 49.26 (6th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 6.65 (9th)
On-ice save%: 90.29 (7th)
Goals/60: 0.07
Assists/60: 0.22
Points/60: 0.3
Graves didn’t generate much offense this season, but the expected goals for percentage being as high as it is for as much flak as he receives was a surprising find from this data set. A lot of that is camouflage from coaching decisions and limited usage, and even then typically third line players that Mike Sullivan would shield tended to have very good stats in this regard.
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
WAR% alone doesn’t capture the full tale of Graves. Shielded from tough competition he wasn’t put in a position to do a lot of damage to the team.
The microstats on Graves show his limitations a little more clearly. He was awful defending on the rush and transitionally he did little to help the team exit the defensive zone or enter the offensive zone.
As a young free agent, the idea was that Graves could get around the ice pretty well. He still has his reach and stick to help, but he doesn’t have much burst in his legs. If Graves wants to improve and salvage his career, finding a way to achieve some gains skating will be a key.
The lack of shots stands out; Graves recorded 100+ SOG in four seasons from 2019-23. He only had 77 in his first season in Pittsburgh and just 39 in 2024-25. The evaporation of this basic tenant of hockey shows how limited he’s become.
Highlights
47 games in, Ryan Graves scores his first goal of the season!#LetsGoPens pic.twitter.com/nCS4mH3uea
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) March 13, 2025
Questions to ponder
What comes next for Ryan Graves? Will he ever become the defenseman general manager Kyle Dubas envisioned he’d be when he signed him to one of the biggest free agent contracts in franchise history two summers ago?
Graves was a frequent healthy scratch throughout the 2024-25 season, and whether you are for or against that, it should be noted that a new head coach may perceive Graves’ value differently than Mike Sullivan did.
Ideal 2025-26
Perhaps a new head coach deploys Graves differently. Maybe he gets a bump in ice time. Until we see that with our eyes, though, for as hard a pill as it is to swallow for Dubas and co., continuing to shelter Graves while accentuating his positives on the third pairing may be the role Graves finds himself in again.
The odds of Dubas jettisoning Graves’ contract to another buyer seem less than reasonable. It would be wise to anticipate another season of Graves in a Penguins sweater, hoping that a new coach might unlock some of the potential that Dubas saw in Graves when he signed the towering blue-liner.
The left side of the Penguins’ defense depth chart is a bit more open than the right side, giving Graves an edge to remain on the ice rather than in the press box.
Is it considered the nuclear option if Dubas and the Penguins bury Graves’ contract in the AHL a la Tristan Jarry? Doing so would allow the Penguins to save the league minimum salary plus another $375K, equaling $1.15M in total savings.