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Was Ryan Shea’s strong 2025-26 sustainble or lucky? | 31 Oilers Questions (Day 6)

Photo credit: © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

By Ryley Delaney

Aug 7, 2026, 09:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 6, 2026, 20:05 EDT

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This August, Oilersnation will ask one question about every Edmonton Oilers player projected to be on the 2026-27 roster in preparation for the upcoming season. From Connor McDavid to Mattias Janmark, let’s ask some questions.

On Canada Day, the Edmonton Oilers made significant changes to their back-end. They were able to trade Darnell Nurse’s entire cap hit of $9.25 million and even got positive value for him, acquiring Shakir Mukhamadullin and Zack Sharp for the long-time Oiler defenceman.

Shortly after, the Oilers found his replacement, signing Ryan Shea to a five-year deal worth $20 million, at an annual cap hit of $4 million. Shea is coming off a strong season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but that raises the question:

Was the left-shot defenceman’s breakout season the norm from now on, or was he on a PDO heater? Let’s find out in today’s edition of 31 Oilers Questions.

Ryan Shea’s 2025-26: Is it the norm or a PDO heater?

Shea had a breakout season in 2025-26.

Drafted 121st overall in the 2015 NHL draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, the Milton, Mass., product spent four seasons at Northeastern University, then another three seasons in the AHL before making his debut with the Penguins in 2023-24, his third organization.

Even then, he didn’t play more than half a season at the NHL level until last season. In 2023-24, he scored a goal in 31 games, while playing 23 AHL games. While he didn’t play an AHL game in 2024-25, he only dressed in 39 games for the Penguins that season.

Then, with increased playing time in 2025-26, the 29-year-old broke out. Over 80 games, he scored six goals and 35 points, helping the overperforming Penguins make the playoffs. They went down 3-0 to the Philadelphia Flyers, won two games, but lost in six.

Not only did Shea have a career-best year, but so did Ryan Mantha, Yegor Chinakhov, Justin Brazeau, and Connor Dewar. Of the players with 600 or more minutes played, no one overperformed like Shea. Let’s look at the advanced statistic PDO.

PDO, which isn’t actually an acronym for anything, is a statistic that can quantify luck or overperformance. It essentially adds the team’s shooting percentage and its save percentage, multiplied by 100. An average PDO is 1.00, with anything higher than 1.02 being classified as considerably lucky and anything less than 0.98 being considerably unlucky.

Just to establish a baseline, according to Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers’ had a team PDO of 0.981 during five-on-five action over the course of the season, a pretty unlucky season all around. It was heavily hampered by the team’s save percentage, though their 9.18 shooting percentage was nothing special either. Overall, their 0.981 PDO ranked tied for third-worst, with only two teams finishing the season with a PDO below 0.975 and two teams finishing with a PDO above 1.021.

Shea, on the other hand, had a five-on-five PDO of 1.041. No one on the Oilers even came close to that, with Zach Hyman’s 1.003 PDO ranking as the highest (minimum: 600 five-on-five minutes).

It’s not the be-all, end-all of statistics. Good players on good teams with good goaltending tend to have high PDO, such as Nathan MacKinnon. His PDO last season of 1.053 ranked tied for eighth-best. You can’t really describe MacKinnon as “lucky”, but a player like Viktor Arvidsson, who finished the year with a league-high (minimum: 600 minutes) 1.064 PDO? Yeah, that’s lucky.

Among players with 600 five-on-five minutes, Shea’s PDO ranked tied for 27th in a sample size of 546. Of players with 1,000 or more minutes, his PDO ranked tied for 10th in a sample size of 268 players.

While Shea was on the ice during five-on-five, the Penguins had a shooting percentage of 13.10 per cent—that’s not sustainable. For context, Connor McDavid’s career-high shooting percentage is 11.17, while his PDO of 1.030 in 2016-17 is the highest of his career. It’s a similar situation for Leon Draisaitl as well.

There was undeniably some luck in Shea’s season, but there are also signs that it was a genuine breakout. For starters, the eye test is enough to tell us that he can actually make a breakout pass and get out of the zone consistently. With Jake Walman and Evan Bouchard likely on the two other pairs, the Oilers have three puck-moving defencemen.

The Penguins also had a strong penalty kill, with their 81.4 per cent penalty-killing percentage ranking tied for sixth. Shea was a crucial member of that penalty kill, playing the third-most minutes of any Penguin while shorthanded. Oilersnation contributor NHL_Sid goes into far more depth and explains it better than I ever could in this article.

While Shea was lucky and his breakout coming in his late-20s is a bit worrisome, he’s still a good player. At the price point, he’ll fit in nicely on the Oilers’ bottom pairing against easier competition.

31 Oilers questions in 31 days…

Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. Follow her on X at @Ryley__Delaney.

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