Cole Smith

55 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, from a fourth-liner.

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

2020-21	NSH	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0.0	5:57
2021-22	NSH	8	0	0	0	-3	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	8:50
2022-23	NSH	69	4	13	17	-3	60	0	0	1	64	6.3	12:45
2023-24	NSH	80	9	14	23	+5	63	0	1	4	112	8.0	13:41
2024-25	NSH	71	4	8	12	-15	69	0	0	0	69	5.8	13:36
2025-26	NSH/VGK	63	8	4	12	-7	40	0	0	2	69	11.6	13:17
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	292	25	39	64	-23	232	0	1	7	318	7.9	13:12

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

8 goals and 4 assists in 63 games — 12 points, minus-7, at 13:17 a night with 40 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Vegas.

The Finesse Game

Thin, and pointed in the right direction. 55 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside 20 feet, median 18 — one of the shortest averages of any forward in this edition — and 8 of 110 went in.

4 assists in 63 games is the whole of the playmaking. He is not there to make plays.

The Physical Game

6-3, 195, and fast for it. He forechecks hard, finishes checks, and kills penalties. 40 penalty minutes.

The Intangibles

49.9 per cent of the expected goals, 54th percentile, and 51.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 70th, in 707 minutes on a good team.

Undrafted, 292 NHL games, 64 points. He is 30, and he is exactly the modern fourth-liner this book keeps describing — quick enough to play a real shift, willing enough to do the unpleasant part, and capable of 8 goals rather than 2.

He joins a club whose forwards finished in the bottom fifth of the league almost to a man. He will not fix that. He will make one line harder to play against, which is worth having.

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

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
28% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 707 minutes

Expected goals: 49.9%; 54th pct
Shot attempts: 51.5%; 71st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 14 for, 28 against. Expected: 25.4 and 25.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

19th

Numbers

54th

The numbers rank him 35 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2025-26 · 63 games

Top speed: 23.5 mph; 94th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.83 a game
Distance: 2.08 miles a game
Hardest shot: 79.3 mph; 19th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 0 assists, 17 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with NSH · 493 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, 2025-26

The club: VGK took 53.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 3.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: 707 minutes at five-on-five — 31st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Michael McCarron	48.1%	52.3%	47.9%
Nick Perbix	46.4%	51.2%	45.0%
Roman Josi	45.2%	51.4%	48.6%

48.1% together, 52.3% for him apart and 47.9% for McCarron apart. He was better away from McCarron, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost McCarron.

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

110 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.