This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Cole Sillinger
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
The tenth percentile of chances, seventeen goals underwater, and he is twenty-one.
| 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 | CBJ | 64 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -23 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 93 | 3.2 | 13:19 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 77 | 13 | 19 | 32 | -4 | 46 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 157 | 8.3 | 16:07 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 220 | 32 | 42 | 74 | -49 | 105 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 398 | 8.0 | 14:26 |
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
13 goals and 19 assists in 77 games — 32 points at 16:07 a night, minus-4, with 1 power-play goal and 1 game-winner on 157 shots at 8.28 per cent, and 46 penalty minutes.
43.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,017 minutes, the 14th percentile — the worst mark of any regular on this roster. His ice went 43-45 against an expectation of 40.15-51.55 — five goals conceded above expectation on top of the worst chance share on the club.
The Finesse Game
157 attempts at a median of 26 feet, with 35 per cent from inside 20 and 22 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 8.28 per cent against a career 8.04.
The shot is ordinary and the volume is high, which is the shape of a young centre being asked to carry more than he can. Thirty-two goals in 220 career games.
19 assists. He moves the puck simply and he does not create; the passing is competent rather than a strength.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 202 and heavy for the height. He forechecks hard and he finishes checks, and he competes on the wall against men who are bigger.
46 penalty minutes in 77 games and 105 in 220 for his career is a moderate rate, and a share of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step.
The Intangibles
Twelfth overall in 2021, out of Sioux Falls, and 220 NHL games and 74 points at 21 with a career minus-49.
He has played three full NHL seasons and is still twenty-one. Being handed a thousand five-on-five minutes at nineteen and twenty on the worst defensive structure in the East is the least useful development a young centre can be given, and the tenth percentile of chances is very largely that rather than him.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- 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.
“**He forechecks hard and he finishes checks**, and he competes on the wall against men who are bigger.”
“**He forechecks hard and he finishes checks**, and he competes on the wall against men who are bigger.”
“46 penalty minutes in 77 games and 105 in 220 for his career is a moderate rate, and a share of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step.”
“19 assists. He moves the puck simply and he does not create; the passing is competent rather than a strength.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,017 minutes
- Expected goals
- 43.8%
- 14th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.9%
- 34th 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: 43 for, 45 against. Expected: 40.1 and 51.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 — 64 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 · 77 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 26th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.83 a game
- Distance
- 2.58 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.3 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 · 1017 minutes at five-on-five
- Kent Johnson23%
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
- CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.8% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,017 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexandre Texier | 43.3% | 44.2% | 42.6% |
| Damon Severson | 43.0% | 44.2% | 50.7% |
| Zach Werenski | 46.4% | 42.5% | 48.6% |
43.3% together, 44.2% for him apart and 42.6% for Texier apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
210 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 35% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.