This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →

Emil Bemstrom

Nineteen goals in 117 games across three seasons, and a fourth-round pick still waiting for the shot to arrive.

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

2019-20	CBJ	56	10	10	20	-10	8	5	0	4	97	10.3	12:16
2020-21	CBJ	20	3	2	5	+2	0	1	0	0	28	10.7	12:51
2021-22	CBJ	41	6	5	11	-1	4	0	0	1	62	9.7	10:31
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	117	19	17	36	-9	12	6	0	5	187	10.2	11:45

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

6 goals and 5 assists in 41 games — 11 points at 10:31 a night, minus-1, with 4 penalty minutes.

48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 393 minutes. His ice went 16-16 against an expectation of 15.53-16.31 — a rare Blue Jacket whose ice broke even, in a sample too small to mean much.

Three hundred and ninety-three minutes is below the 500 this book requires before it will rank a player against the league, so no percentiles are quoted here.

The Finesse Game

Sixty-two shots at 9.7 per cent, on a median distance of 32 feet with 25 per cent from the slot. He was drafted as a shooter, and the shot is being taken from the wrong place.

Ten goals as a rookie in 2019-20 remains his best season, and he has 19 in 117 career games.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 190. Ten and a half minutes a night, and the fourth-line role has not produced anything that measures.

1.74 miles a game is the second-lowest figure on this roster, which is a shift-length artefact more than a description: the fourth line does not cover ground.

The Intangibles

One hundred and seventeenth overall in 2017, and 117 NHL games at 23.

He has been sent down and recalled in each of the last two seasons. On a club that has just added a hundred-point winger, the fourth-line minutes he needs are the ones about to disappear.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
30.9% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
disciplined· stays out of the box
0.10 penalty minutes a game over 41, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 393 minutes

Expected goals: 48.8%; 46th pct
Shot attempts: 50.7%; 62nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 16 against. Expected: 15.5 and 16.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

9th

Numbers

46th

The numbers rank him 37 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 50 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 · 41 games

Top speed: 23.1 mph; 90th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.51 a game
Distance: 1.74 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.6 mph; 52nd 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 · 393 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 48.8% — 4.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: 393 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Andrew Peeke	45.4%	50.5%	43.6%
Eric Robinson	52.3%	47.3%	44.8%
Vladislav Gavrikov	44.4%	50.9%	45.5%

45.4% together, 50.5% for him apart and 43.6% for Peeke apart. He was better away from Peeke, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Peeke.

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

81 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.