This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Cole Sillinger

Sixteen goals as an eighteen-year-old in 79 games, and a minus-22 for the trouble.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2021-22	CBJ	79	16	15	31	-22	37	0	0	3	148	10.8	13:42
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	79	16	15	31	-22	37	0	0	3	148	10.8	13:42

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

16 goals and 15 assists in 79 games — 31 points at 13:42 a night, minus-22, with 37 penalty minutes.

44.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 970 minutes, the 13th percentile among forwards. His ice went 34-55 against an expectation of 37.16-45.53 — three fewer goals for than the chances promised and ten more against.

He turned nineteen in May, and the minus-22 is the second-worst on this roster.

The Finesse Game

8.20 shots per 60 is the 65th percentile among forwards and 10.8 per cent of them went in. A median 25 feet with 48 per cent from the slot: he shoots from where a centre should.

1.77 even-strength points per 60 is the 49th percentile and only 6 per cent of his points came on the power play, the 28th. Everything he produced, he produced at five-on-five in his draft-plus-one season, which is the part worth holding onto.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 202, 5.43 hits and 2.38 blocks per 60, the 66th and 80th percentiles among forwards. He finishes checks and he gets in lanes, at nineteen, in the NHL.

10.05 miles per 60 is the 84th percentile among forwards against a top speed of 22.1 mph at the 30th. He works; he is not quick.

38.5 per cent of his even-strength time was in the offensive zone, the 6th percentile. Nobody sheltered him, and the minus-22 is partly the bill for that.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2021, and 79 NHL games before his nineteenth birthday.

He went straight from the draft into a top-nine role on the worst defensive team in the league and did not look out of place, which is a harder thing than the raw line suggests. 1.33 takeaways per 60 is the 27th percentile among forwards, and the defensive detail is where the second season has to arrive.

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
79 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
“He finishes checks and he gets in lanes, at nineteen, in the NHL.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 970 minutes

Expected goals: 44.9%; 17th pct
Shot attempts: 47.9%; 36th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 34 for, 55 against. Expected: 37.2 and 45.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

38th

Numbers

17th

The report ranks him 21 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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, 2021-22 · 79 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 49th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.37 a game
Distance: 2.30 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.1 mph; 68th 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

2021-22 · 970 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, 2021-22

The club: CBJ took 44.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.9% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 970 minutes at five-on-five — 58th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Oliver Bjorkstrand	50.3%	41.5%	46.6%
Jakub Voracek	44.6%	45.1%	42.5%
Vladislav Gavrikov	44.9%	44.9%	45.6%

50.3% together, 41.5% for him apart and 46.6% for Bjorkstrand 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

198 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 35% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.