This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Cole Caufield

Four hundred and forty attempts at 5-8 and 175 pounds, and nine goals short of his own career rate.

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	MTL	82	28	37	65	-4	16	9	0	7	314	8.9	19:25
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	205	81	68	149	-39	30	21	0	15	690	11.7	17:57

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

All 82 games, 28 goals and 37 assists for 65 points, 9 on the power play, 16 penalty minutes, 19:25 a night and minus-4. He took 49.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,213 minutes, the 46th percentile, and his ice went 59-44 against an expectation of 55.03-57.24.

Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and thirteen fewer conceded than they called for — the largest goaltending gain of anybody on this roster.

The Finesse Game

440 attempts at a median of 27 feet with 32 per cent from inside 20, 314 of them on goal, converted at 8.9 per cent against a career 11.74.

Twenty-eight goals on 314 shots is nine below what his own career rate would have produced. 68 career assists in 205 games. The shot is the entire player — it is released from the left circle before a goaltender has finished setting — and 440 attempts in a season says he knows it.

The Physical Game

He is 5-8 and 175 and avoids contact entirely, which is the correct decision.

16 penalty minutes in 82 games is one of the lowest rates in the league. He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and is moved off the puck by anybody who gets a hand on him.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2019 out of Mosinee, Wisconsin, two years at Wisconsin, four seasons, and 149 points in 205 games.

He is 23 and has scored 23, 26 and 28 in his three real seasons. The volume is already there; if the conversion returns to his career rate this is a forty-goal winger.

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:48 a game at five-on-five, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and is moved off the puck by anybody who gets a hand on him.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and is moved off the puck by anybody who gets a hand on him.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and is moved off the puck by anybody who gets a hand on him.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is 5-8 and 175 and avoids contact entirely, which is the correct decision.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,213 minutes

Expected goals: 49%; 46th pct
Shot attempts: 48.5%; 41st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 44 against. Expected: 55.0 and 57.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

47th

Numbers

46th

The two rank him within 1 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 78th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.13 a game
Distance: 3.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.3 mph; 86th pct

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

2023-24 · 1213 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, 2023-24

The club: MTL took 46.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,213 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nick Suzuki	50.5%	42.2%	47.3%
Juraj Slafkovsky	49.9%	46.0%	44.8%
Mike Matheson	48.8%	49.2%	41.4%

50.5% together, 42.2% for him apart and 47.3% for Suzuki 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

440 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 33 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.