This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Emil Bemstrom
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
Four seasons, 172 games, and he has never played sixty in one.
| 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 | CBJ | 55 | 7 | 15 | 22 | -11 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 95 | 7.4 | 12:07 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 172 | 26 | 32 | 58 | -20 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 5 | 282 | 9.2 | 11:52 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
7 goals and 15 assists in 55 games, minus-11, 12:07 a night — 22 points, the second-best total of his four years.
46.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 28th percentile — which on this roster is above average, and that is the whole difficulty of reading a Columbus season. His ice went 23-34 against an expectation of 24.08-28.08.
Four seasons, 172 games, 58 points. He has played 56, 20, 41 and 55 games, and the American league has taken a piece of every year.
The Finesse Game
95 shots at a median of 29 feet, 35 per cent from inside twenty and 25 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside forty: 74 shots, seven goals, 9.46 per cent. Beyond forty: 20 shots, none.
He was a scorer in Sweden — he led the SHL in goals the year before he crossed — and 26 goals in 172 NHL games is what the transfer has produced. 91.4 mph at the 54th percentile; the shot is fine and the release has not translated.
The 15 assists in 55 games are the more encouraging half.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 190. 22.5 mph at the 60th percentile, 1.4 bursts a game at the 70th, 1.93 miles a game at the 13th.
Ordinary speed and very little of it, which is consistent with twelve-minute nights and does not argue for more of them.
6 penalty minutes in 55 games. He is not physical and does not defend hard; on a fourth line that is the thing standing between him and a settled job.
The Intangibles
117th overall in 2017, and a fourth-round pick who led the Swedish league in goals at 19 — which is the sort of thing that gets a player a long look.
He is 24, has had four partial seasons and no full one. Columbus have kept giving him chances because the alternative names are worse, and that is a fair description of where the club is rather than of 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
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.11 penalty minutes a game over 55, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 606 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.2%
- 29th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.8%
- 28th 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: 23 for, 34 against. Expected: 24.1 and 28.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 27 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 49 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, 2022-23 · 55 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 66th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.38 a game
- Distance
- 1.93 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.4 mph
- 75th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 · 606 minutes at five-on-five
- Liam Foudy28%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.2% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 606 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Peeke | 45.0% | 46.7% | 43.4% |
| Jack Roslovic | 41.7% | 48.1% | 41.3% |
| Liam Foudy | 45.6% | 46.4% | 39.9% |
45.0% together, 46.7% for him apart and 43.4% for Peeke 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
133 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 35% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.