Of everyone wearing a Capitals sweater, Martin Fehervary may well be the most misread.
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The Statistical Snapshot
# 5
Tallies
# 22
Helpers
# 81
Appearances
# 19
Average ice time
His shares while deployed
# 47%
Attempts toward goal
# 49%
Expected-goal portion
# 53%
Real goals tilt
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HockeyViz: Isolated Impact
A note on the graphic: Generated by Micah McCurdy over at hockeyviz, the visual conveys how a given skater bent play across his shifts. The upper half captures his team's offense (five-on-five toward the left, the man advantage toward the right), while the lower half holds the defense (with the kill set in the bottom-right corner). Throughout each panel, warm red-and-orange zones mark areas from which clubs shoot more, and cool blue-and-purple zones mark where they shoot less. As a general rule, a strong player should display warm tones near the rival cage up high and cool tones near his own cage down low. The distributions running through the center stack him against the league norm on finishing by himself, on creating for linemates, and on drawing as opposed to taking penalties. The figure planted at the middle represents the Synthetic Goals metric, a single all-encompassing measure of his total influence.
Evolving Hockey: Player Card
A note on the card: Assembled by the pair behind Evolving Hockey, Josh together with Luke, this readout sizes the skater up against league norms based on how he shifts on-ice numbers. The term GAR refers to "goals over a replacement," in which a "replacement" denotes a run-of-the-mill call-up out of the minors. Its xGAR cousin mirrors the figure but presumes average netminding throughout the loop. The values atop the card show his percentile placement, both as a whole and split out for either end of the sheet.
NHL Edge: Player Overview
A note on the graphic: The loop's tracking platform, Edge, follows the movement of both skaters and the puck. The top portion displays how hard he shoots, how fast he skates, and the distance he travels, each carrying a percentile rank. The bottom-left corner offers a chart of where his shots originate, while the bottom-right breaks down his minutes by zone.
Peter's Bonus Generative Artwork
By way of p5.js, the athlete's name acts as a seed scrambling an array of parameters over a moving canvas decked out in glitchy touches, kept slow enough to avoid bothering anyone with sensory sensitivities. There's no AI involved. Honestly, it's not far removed from Logo, a language I picked up roughly in 1992.
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Peter's Verdict
Overall Grade
53
Ranking percentile versus fellow blueliners
42 — Martin Fehérváry, a left-shot defenseman
Born at age 26 · standing 6'2″ · listed 215 lbs · 🇸🇰 · ♎️
Games: 81
Goals: 5
Assists: 22
Points: 27
Goals-for share: 52.9%
Expected-goals share: 48.3%
Shot-attempt share: 47.1%
His 2025-26 line
Club: WSH 🦅
For all intents and purposes, Fehervary functioned as a top-pairing blueliner in Washington across the whole year, logging 498 minutes next to John Carlson until Carlson was dealt to Anaheim. That's no easy assignment: heavy ice time spent beside an offense-first defender with glaring flaws away from the puck. Yet the duo flat-out thrived, outscoring opponents 32 to 17 at the Caps' end. Call it complementary skill sets or something else entirely, but the Marty-Carly tandem clicked.
Across those 399 minutes he played with Carlson off his pairing, the club claimed a mere 43.6 percent of the shot-attempt total and was buried by a 31-22 margin. That stretch carries the most weight in evaluating him, since it better reflects what's coming. As the season wound down he rotated through a variety of partners, among them McIlrath, Roy, and Sandin, which makes it tough to isolate much from those figures. The plain verdict is that it was poor, and that leaves reason to fret about what next year holds.
Fehervary inked a hefty extension last summer, and I'm uneasy about how this plays out. Stripped of the criticism magnet that John Carlson became, Fehervary could be left exposed. His game has to grow.
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More Marty Coverage Here
- Back in July, Marty inked a deal spanning seven years at $6M each season.
Martin Fehervary puts his preposterous leg power on display, bounding all the way from his own zone to the bench while missing a blade on one skate
- Up against Logan Stankoven, who conceded afterward that the bout was honestly something he relished.
- A Capitals game opposite Carolina that Fehervary skipped in order to be on hand when his first child arrived.
- Becoming a convert to "Dad Strength" once he scored in the very first contest after his daughter entered the world.
- A quick Olympic recap!
+ At the Games, he wore the alternate captain's letter for Slovakia. + The Slovaks dropped a 6-2 decision to the Americans. + They wound up fourth, losing the bronze-medal contest against Finland. + Looking back on their long-shot run, he summed it up as savoring the shared moments and scrapping on behalf of one another.
- On the subject of the Tkachuk siblings, following an entire scene that played out near their dressing room, Marty observed that their reputation precedes them.
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Over To You
If the magic of the Carlson-Fehervary duo wasn't purely down to Carlson, what was actually behind it?
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