This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Cole Smith

Undrafted out of North Dakota, 46 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and a penalty-killing winger on the 8th-best unit in the league.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	229	17	35	52	-16	192	0	1	5	249	6.8	13:10

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

71 games, 4 goals and 8 assists for 12 points at 13:36 a night, on 69 shots at 5.8 per cent. 69 penalty minutes. Minus-15, on five-on-five goals of 19-31.

A 48.4 per cent chance share in a checking role, and the on-ice figures against expectation — 19-31 against 25.8-27.97 — are generous at both ends. He is a fourth-line winger who killed penalties on a unit that finished 2nd in the league at 6.56 expected goals against per 60, and that is the season entire.

The Finesse Game

46 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 21, which is the only kind of shot available to him, and 5.8 per cent on 69 attempts is what it returns.

There is no offensive game here to describe and there has never been a pretence of one. What he does have is a functional first pass and enough speed to force a defenceman into a decision on the forecheck, which is the whole of the job.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 195 and he finishes checks with real force. 69 penalty minutes at thirteen minutes a night is a heavy rate, and most of it is roughing after the whistle rather than anything that gives up a chance.

He will fight and he does not go looking for one.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, four years at North Dakota, an American League contract at 24, and a genuine NHL career from 26 onward — a Minnesotan who took the longest available route to four NHL seasons.

That path is the reason nobody on this roster questions the compete level, and it is why a club replacing half its bottom six kept 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.

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
24% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, four years at North Dakota, an American League contract at 24, and a genuine NHL career from 26 onward”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He is a fourth-line winger who killed penalties on a unit that finished 2nd in the league at 6.56 expected goals against per 60, and that is the season entire.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-3 and 195 and he finishes checks with real force.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“enough speed to force a defenceman into a decision on the forecheck, which is the whole of the job”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“69 penalty minutes at thirteen minutes a night is a heavy rate, and most of it is roughing after the whistle rather than anything that gives up a chance.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 756 minutes

Expected goals: 47.9%; 34th pct
Shot attempts: 49.6%; 48th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 31 against. Expected: 25.8 and 28.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

3rd

Numbers

34th

The numbers rank him 31 points above where the report does. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2024-25 · 71 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.63 a game
Distance: 2.13 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.8 mph; 50th 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

2024-25 · 756 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, 2024-25

The club: NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.9% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 756 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Michael McCarron	45.7%	51.2%	45.2%
Colton Sissons	46.6%	48.8%	48.8%
Brady Skjei	44.4%	50.0%	47.5%

45.7% together, 51.2% for him apart and 45.2% 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

96 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.