This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Blake Coleman

The 96th percentile in five-on-five share, and thirteen goals of scoring that never arrived.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	NJD	23	1	1	2	-7	27	0	0	0	29	3.5	12:51
2017-18	NJD	79	13	12	25	+7	50	0	3	2	146	8.9	14:24
2018-19	NJD	78	22	14	36	-19	71	3	3	3	213	10.3	17:01
2019-20	NJD/TBL	66	21	11	32	0	56	1	3	2	200	10.5	16:43
2020-21	TBL	55	14	17	31	+15	37	1	1	3	122	11.5	15:28
2021-22	CGY	81	16	17	33	+16	60	0	1	2	212	7.5	14:49
2022-23	CGY	82	18	20	38	+9	54	0	2	2	188	9.6	15:12
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	464	105	92	197	+21	355	5	13	14	1110	9.5	15:26

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

18 goals and 20 assists in 82 games — 38 points at 15:12 a night, plus-9, with 2 shorthanded goals on 188 shots, converting at 9.57 per cent, and 54 penalty minutes.

58.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,117 minutes, the 96th percentile. His ice went 44-39 against an expectation of 56.76-40.29. Thirteen goals of scoring did not arrive, and that gap repeated across this roster is the whole of Calgary’s season.

The Finesse Game

188 attempts at a median of 21 feet, 49 per cent from inside 20 and 18 per cent from beyond 40, off an 89.1 mph shot at the 39th percentile.

He goes to the net and he shoots from where goals are scored, and he converted at 9.57 per cent doing it. 105 goals in 464 career games says the finishing is ordinary; the shot chart says the chances were not. Two shorthanded goals and a career of them says the aggression on the kill is real.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 199 and he plays much bigger — 355 penalty minutes in 464 games, and he forechecks like the first man in is the only job that matters.

The skating is the engine: 23.1 mph top end at the 87th percentile. He arrives on the puck carrier before the pass is made, which is why the shot-attempt share is what it is, and he is one of the better penalty killers in the league.

The Intangibles

Seventy-fifth overall in 2011 to New Jersey, out of Miami University, and two Stanley Cups in Tampa before Calgary signed him.

He is 31. He is the most straightforwardly useful player on this roster and the one whose contract will look worst in three years — a game built entirely on speed and forechecking does not age gently, and there are several years left on it.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“355 penalty minutes in 464 games, and he forechecks like the first man in is the only job that matters”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“he is one of the better penalty killers in the league”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He goes to the net and he shoots from where goals are scored, and he converted at 9.57 per cent doing it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,117 minutes

Expected goals: 58.5%; 96th pct
Shot attempts: 59.9%; 97th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 39 against. Expected: 56.8 and 40.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

84th

Numbers

96th

The two rank him within 12 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 99 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1117 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2022-23

The club: CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.5% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,117 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mikael Backlund	60.8%	51.4%	59.6%
Andrew Mangiapane	63.6%	54.1%	52.3%
MacKenzie Weegar	57.8%	58.9%	58.6%

60.8% together, 51.4% for him apart and 59.6% for Backlund apart. He was worse away from Backlund, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Backlund did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

252 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.