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Zach Metsa

Buffalo Sabres

Zach Metsa

BUFDefenceJersey number #73

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2026-27 regular season

Games played
1
Goals
0
Assists
0
Points
0

As of Oct 2, 6:09 AM ET · updated each morning

How good

Among 509 defencemen, 2021-22 to 2026-27

Pool: every defenceman who played in those seasons · Sample: 46 games

No production figure in the top quarter of his pool.

Production

Production: percentile among 509 defencemen, and the adjusted per-game rate it was computed from
StatPctlAdjusted per game
Points120.16
Goals480.07
Assists60.09
Shots on goal20.57
Power-play points450.02

Style and role

Style and role: percentile among 509 defencemen, and the adjusted per-game rate it was computed from
StatPctlAdjusted per game
Hits00.15
Blocked shots90.77
Penalty minutes390.39

Further right means more, not better: hits, blocked shots and penalty minutes describe a role, not quality.

What adjusted per game means — not his recorded rate
Adjusted per game is the rate each percentile was computed from: his recorded rate, weighted toward recent games and pulled toward the league average by sample size, so a short career does not read as an elite one. It sits closer to average than the rate recorded, so a skater with no points in his games can still show points per game above zero.

How he got here

Each regular season

  • 2025-26: 6 over 43 games
  • 2026-27 to date: 0 over 1 games
  • 2026-27 projected: 13.6, a full-season pace
Points, regular season. Filled dots are finished seasons; the smaller dot is the season to date; the dotted ring is the 2026-27 full-season pace from the projections board, the projected rate across the club's whole schedule, not a forecast of the total. GP: games played.

What next

2026-27, projected

Full-season pace · his rate times the schedule

If he plays all 84 Buffalo Sabres games at his modelled per-game rate

Points
13.6
Goals
5.7
Assists
7.8
Shots on goal
48.3
Power-play points
2.0
Hits
12.8
Blocked shots
64.5
Penalty minutes
32.5

Based on 46 games he has played, weighted toward recent ones. It assumes he plays all 84: injuries, scratches and trades are not modelled.

How the pace is worked out — the figure the projections board ranks on

Each figure is his per-game rate, weighted toward recent games, times the 84 games on the Buffalo Sabres schedule. It is the pace the projections board ranks the league on, so the figure a reader clicked there is the one at the top of this card.

Shooting

Where he shoots, and how he finishes

Shot density · 2025-26 · open play, regular season

FewerMore attempts, up to this skater’s busiest cell

Open play · regular season · goals

Goals against a league-average finisher, by season

In 2025-26 he scored 2 where a league-average finisher would score 1.2 from his chances: 0.8 more.

  1. 2025-26 · on the rink2 G · 1.2 avg · +0.8 · 26 GP

  • Goals
  • A league-average finisher
What the ring counts — what a league-average finisher would score from the same attempts

The shot model prices the chance of a goal on every unblocked attempt he took in open play during the regular season; shootouts and penalty shots are left out. Those chances are scaled so that, across the league, they add up to the goals actually scored that season, so the ring is what a league-average finisher would have scored from his attempts and each season is measured against its own average. The gap is his goals minus that; the table below lists the exact figures.

Finishing against the league average · open play, regular season

Finishing by season: goals against a league-average finisher on the same attempts
SeasonG
2025-261.22+0.82635

G vs avg: goals minus what a league-average finisher would score from the same attempts (Exp G, the model’s expected goals scaled to that season’s league-wide scoring).

Detail

The record

Regular season

Regular season, by season
SeasonGAP
2026-2710000.00012:54
2025-26432460.142410:58

2025-26 regular season by strength · G-A-P

Even strength
2 goals, 4 assists, 6 points
Power play
0 goals, 0 assists, 0 points
Shorthanded
0 goals, 0 assists, 0 points

Penalty-shot goals are not counted here: each one leaves these a goal and a point below his regular-season totals.

Last 10 games

Last 10 games, newest first
DateOppGAHITBLKPIM
Oct 1@ CBJ000002512:54
May 18vs MTL, playoff game00000003:25
May 16@ MTL, playoff game110101012:19
Apr 15vs DAL000001014:43
Apr 9vs CBJ000000019:26
Apr 4@ WSH000001015:15
Apr 2@ OTT100001016:04
Mar 31vs NYI100000014:04
Mar 22@ ANA000002012:13
Mar 21@ LAK101012213:59

PO = playoff game.

Markets · latest captured, not current

Apr 9 vs Columbus Blue Jackets · 7:00 PM ET

The prices posted for a game already played. Open to see them.

The model has not beaten the Pinnacle closing line: shots-on-goal ROI −0.0709 [−0.0932, −0.0467] per unit over 7,171 bets in a 2025-26 backtest of 512 games. How this was measured

Pre-game snapshotCaptured Oct 1, 8:21 PM ET

This game’s markets: the posted line, the model’s projection and its chance of the over
MarketLineModel projectionModel chance of over
Anytime goal0.50.02%