Vitals
Player: Ryan Graves
Born: May 21, 1995 (Age 30 season)
Height: 6’ 5”
Weight: 225 pounds
Hometown: Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2013 fourth round (110th overall) by the New York Rangers
2025-26 Statistics: 22 games played, 1 goal, 0 assists = 1 point ; 15 games played, 3 goals, 7 assists with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Contract Status: Three years remaining on a six-year deal signed in 2023 that carries a $4.5 million salary cap hit at the NHL level.
Story of the Season
Year 3 of the Ryan Graves experiment
in Pittsburgh played out much differently than the first two go arounds for the defenseman, and it wasn’t because he suddenly found his game and vastly improved from what he saw in seasons prior. This season, Graves spent most of his time either in the AHL with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton or as a healthy scratch when he was recalled to the big club during the season.
Moves made by the front office last offseason signaled that perhaps Graves position on the team was in some jeopardy and he was going to have to earn his spot with a strong showing in training camp and during the preseason. To his credit, Graves did perform well in those situations and Kyle Dubas said as much to the media before the season began. In the end though, Graves was placed on waivers before opening night and went down to the AHL where he played 15 games.
If a player went down injured at any point, Graves was well positioned to be the first call up and that’s what happened in November when players started getting banged up and reinforcements were needed. Once recalled in November, Graves played a stretch of 17 straight games for the Penguins, scoring his lone goal of the season on November 8th, but came out of the lineup and was placed back on waivers when Brett Kulak was acquired.
Graves was recalled back to the NHL in January where he suffered an injury that landed him on injured reserve. Once he was healthy again, Graves was available to play but instead saw himself given a healthy scratch for a string of games before being placed on waivers a third time this season and sent back to the AHL.
In the end, Graves ended the season on the NHL roster, being recalled in March then getting into a pair of games in April when the Penguins were resting players to keep them healthy for the upcoming playoffs which were already clinched by the time he was back in the lineup.
Monthly Splits
Injuries got Graves recalled to the NHL in November where he played in 17 straight games for the Penguins before the arrival of Kulak in December from Edmonton. Graves lone goal, and point, of the season came on November 8th against his former team the New Jersey Devils.
After that 17 game stretch, Graves only appeared in four more games for the Penguins in 2025-26 and did not see any action during their playoff series with the Philadelphia Flyers.
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%: 51.7% (4th)
Goals For%: 44.0% (10th)
xGF%: 53.1% (4th)
Scoring Chance %: 53.4% (3rd)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 56.7% (2nd)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 8.4% (10th)
On-ice save%: .878% (9th)
Goals/60: 0.19 (4th)
Assist/60: 0.0 (11th)
Points/60: 0.19 (11th)
It was a very limited sample size for Graves this season, playing in just 22 contests for the Penguins, totaling just over 320 minutes of ice time, fourth lowest on the team. Such a small amount of data to work with may skew these numbers a bit, but overall Graves was all over the map when it comes to the analytics.
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
WAR doesn’t hate Ryan Graves, but it also doesn’t capture the weaknesses and deficiencies that pushed him off the NHL roster. One area represented here is an absence of offensive impact – Graves scored 14 goals and 52 points in two years with New Jersey from 2021-23. That’s completely disappeared in Pittsburgh where Graves has five points in the last two seasons (83 total games). His ability to move the puck in any meaningful way has gone out the window.
The Pens tried to put Graves out in situations where he wouldn’t crush them, often starting shifts on the fly in a non-matchup role against the opposition’s lower lines.
Graves only played in about a quarter-season’s worth of NHL games, so it makes sense that his bursts are about a quarter of the quantity on the average. It’s still chasing the low end of those projections, though. Graves isn’t a sluggish skater but he’s also over 30 now and has completed 11 pro seasons. With a 6’5” and 225 frame, the skating ability is only likely to tail away in the future.
Highlights
Questions to ponder
Is there any way Kyle Dubas can work some more magic to get Graves and his contract off the books this offseason?
It seems rather unlikely Dubas could move Graves without tossing in some deal sweeteners for the other side, and given how Dubas views assets, that seems like a route he wants to avoid at all costs. There is no trade market for Graves on his own because neither his play or his contract makes him an enticing acquisition even for teams looking to add salary in the offseason.
Ideal 2026-27
Perhaps Dubas can pull another rabbit out of a hat and find a way to move Graves this offseason to give everyone a clean slate heading into 2026-27. If a trade does come together involving Graves, it’s likely going to be a deal involving multiple players or other pieces and involve the Penguins taking on money to even things out for the other side.
There is no simple 1-for-1 solution to the Graves issue, but the ideal scenario for both sides heading into next season is for them to part ways over the summer, though the likelihood of that happening seems rather low at the moment.
Bottom line
Fans can hope and pray that Dubas finds a way to move Graves at some point this offseason, but the reality is he is more than likely to be on the Penguins roster when training camp opens in September. Where exactly he falls on the depth chart is an entire other question, but given how the 2025-26 season played out, Graves is at best an 8th or 9th defenseman for the Penguins and perhaps even lower depending on what moves they make in free agency or via trade.
They will enter next season, potential trades notwithstanding, with a top four of Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson, Parker Wotherspoon, and Sam Girard. Ryan Shea’s future in Pittsburgh remains up in the air, but we already know than Ilya Solovyov will be back. You have to assume Dubas will be bringing in some new bodies on the blue line either way, and just based on Graves’ 2025-26 season, it’s hard to imagine him being a lineup regular again in Pittsburgh.
Final Grade
C-
There wasn’t a huge sample size to judge Graves on this season, but when he was on the ice, his play was not memorable at best. Being waived out of training camp and being left off the opening night roster was a pretty strong signal to how the Penguins viewed Graves and his usage in 2025-26 matched that feeling. He did get a string of games through November and December, but when reinforcements were brought in from outside the organization, they were higher on the depth chart than he was.
To Graves’ credit, he remained a true professional this season and handled what was surely a difficult situation with nothing but class and always stepped in when the Penguins needed him. Even when he was outright waived and sent to the minors, Graves never complained and caused any issues for the team. For that alone we’ll bump his grade up a hair, because he easily could have chosen a different path to how he handled the season.
