This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Eric Robinson
Columbus Blue Jackets Left Wing
Undrafted, six seasons in one organisation, and the 3rd percentile in zone starts.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 11:21 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 0.0 | 11:50 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 50 | 7 | 5 | 12 | +10 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 69 | 10.1 | 10:57 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ | 56 | 8 | 10 | 18 | +6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 75 | 10.7 | 12:24 |
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 67 | 10 | 17 | 27 | -1 | 18 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 104 | 9.6 | 13:54 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 72 | 12 | 12 | 24 | -21 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 98 | 12.2 | 13:57 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 259 | 37 | 44 | 81 | -9 | 40 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 366 | 10.1 | 12:54 |
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
12 goals and 12 assists in 72 games, minus-21, 13:57 a night — a career high in games and the second-best point total of his six years.
41.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 6th percentile, with his ice at 22-47 against an expectation of 29.91-42.50. Both ends short.
30.2 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 3rd percentile — the same assignment Kuraly was given, and the two of them were on the ice for a great deal of what went wrong.
Six seasons, 259 games, 81 points, all in Columbus.
The Finesse Game
98 shots at a median of 21 feet, 48 per cent from inside twenty.
Inside forty: 80 shots, eleven goals, 13.75 per cent. Beyond forty: 15 shots, one.
82.7 mph at the 5th percentile — one of the softest shots in the league. He scored twelve goals with it, all of them from close range, which is the only way a shot like that produces anything.
12 goals is a career high.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 220, and the skating is the reason he has a career: 22.9 mph at the 81st percentile with 2.8 bursts over twenty a game at the 95th.
A 220-pound winger reaching twenty miles an hour nearly three times a game is a specific and useful thing on a fourth line, and it is what an undrafted free agent has to bring.
2.25 miles a game at the 28th percentile — short shifts, taken hard.
6 penalty minutes in 72 games is a startlingly low number for a man that size playing that way.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Princeton, signed by Columbus in 2017, and six seasons later he is still there.
He is 28, has 37 career goals and plays the hardest minutes on a bad team. That is a real NHL career built from nothing, and the numbers attached to it will always look terrible.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 72, 4th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
30% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“Undrafted, out of Princeton, signed by Columbus in 2017, and six seasons later he is still there.”
“A 220-pound winger reaching twenty miles an hour nearly three times a game is a specific and useful thing on a fourth line”
“He is 28, has 37 career goals and plays the hardest minutes on a bad team.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 842 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.3%
- 6th pct
- Shot attempts
- 41.6%
- 4th 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: 22 for, 47 against. Expected: 29.9 and 42.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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 · 72 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 84th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.78 a game
- Distance
- 2.25 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.7 mph
- 26th 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 · 842 minutes at five-on-five
- Sean Kuraly69%
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 41.3% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 842 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Kuraly | 41.6% | 40.5% | 41.9% |
| Mathieu Olivier | 44.7% | 36.9% | 42.6% |
| Erik Gudbranson | 41.6% | 41.1% | 40.3% |
41.6% together, 40.5% for him apart and 41.9% for Kuraly 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
130 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.