This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Cole Caufield
Montreal Canadiens Right Wing
Twenty-six goals in forty-six games, two penalty minutes, and twenty-four of the goals from inside forty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | MTL | 10 | 4 | 1 | 5 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 30 | 13.3 | 13:58 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 67 | 23 | 20 | 43 | -24 | 10 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 188 | 12.2 | 16:41 |
| 2022-23 | MTL | 46 | 26 | 10 | 36 | -10 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 158 | 16.5 | 18:03 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 123 | 53 | 31 | 84 | -35 | 14 | 12 | 0 | 8 | 376 | 14.1 | 16:58 |
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
26 goals and 10 assists in 46 games — 36 points — with seven on the power play and two penalty minutes. Minus-10, 18:03 a night, 158 shots at 16.5 per cent.
Twenty-six goals in forty-six games is a forty-six-goal pace, and the season ended in January.
44.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 18th percentile, with his ice at 37-35 against an expectation of 24.62-30.61 — twelve goals more at the offensive end than the chances deserved. On a club that finished thirtieth in chance generation, he is a large part of why the goals arrived anyway.
Three seasons, 123 games, 84 points, and 53 goals.
The Finesse Game
158 shots at a median of 29 feet, 32 per cent from inside twenty and 19 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 33 shots on goal, 2 goals. Inside forty: 116 shots and 24 goals — 20.69 per cent.
One hundred and fifty-eight shots in forty-six games is 3.4 a night, which is a first-line shooting rate anywhere in the league. Twenty per cent from inside forty is the finishing.
133 wrist and 46 snap shots out of 228 tracked attempts, and thirty slap shots from a 5-8 winger. The release is the asset and it always has been.
90.9 mph at the 50th percentile. He does not overpower goaltenders; he beats them before they are set.
The Physical Game
5-8 and 175, and two penalty minutes in forty-six games.
Top speed 22.3 mph, the 51st percentile; bursts 1.2 a game, the 64th; 3.05 miles a game, the 82nd.
There is no physical game and there does not need to be. At 5-8 and 175 he plays entirely away from contact, finds the space between the circles and shoots from it.
The reservation is the one that comes with the size: he missed thirty-six games last season and the body has already cost him a third of a year at twenty-two.
The Intangibles
Fifteenth overall in 2019 out of Wisconsin, where he scored 30 goals in 31 games and won the Hobey Baker.
58.9 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 87th percentile — the softest share of any Montreal forward, and the context the 44.6 per cent chance share needs.
He turns twenty-three in this edition’s season with 53 goals in 123 NHL games. The finishing is the most valuable single skill on this roster and the durability is the reason it might not be enough.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.04 penalty minutes a game over 46, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“At 5-8 and 175 he plays entirely away from contact, finds the space between the circles and shoots from it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 638 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44.6%
- 19th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.5%
- 42nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 35 against. Expected: 24.6 and 30.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 55 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 46 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.22 a game
- Distance
- 3.05 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.9 mph
- 72nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 638 minutes at five-on-five
- Nick Suzuki90%
- Kirby Dach62%
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
- MTL took 44.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.6% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 638 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirby Dach | 51.9% | 31.9% | 45.8% |
| David Savard | 41.1% | 46.2% | 43.9% |
| Jordan Harris | 51.7% | 41.2% | 45.8% |
51.9% together, 31.9% for him apart and 45.8% for Dach apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
221 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.