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

Eric Robinson

14 goals from a fourth line, 55 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and a 56.9 per cent chance share.

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	CBJ/BUF	47	3	7	10	-3	19	0	0	1	61	4.9	11:20
2024-25	CAR	82	14	18	32	+14	10	0	0	1	110	12.7	12:16
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	388	54	69	123	+2	69	0	3	9	537	10.1	12:35

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

14 goals and 18 assists in 82 games for 32 points, plus-14, on 12:16 a night — a career high in every column at 30.

55.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 93rd percentile, with on-ice goals of 51-39 against an expected 43-34. 55 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet from a median of 19, which is a fourth-line winger being deployed exactly as this club deploys everybody.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely high-end — real straight-line speed, and it is the reason a forechecking winger with no puck skills has a ten-year career.

110 shots in twelve minutes a night is a high rate and 12.7 per cent is above his career mark. The hands are ordinary and the playmaking is minimal; everything he produces comes from arriving first and shooting from close.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 220, and he forechecks with genuine force at speed, which is the specific combination that makes a fourth line dangerous rather than merely safe.

10 penalty minutes across 82 games is exceptional and is the single most impressive line in his record.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, four years at Princeton, and a career made entirely out of speed and willingness.

At 30 with a career year behind him, the projection is a regression toward 20 points and no change in the useful part. The legs are the whole thing and there is no evidence yet that they are going.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
64.0% of his attempts in the slot, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
disciplined· stays out of the box
0.12 penalty minutes a game over 82, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“6-2 and 220, and he forechecks with genuine force at speed, which is the specific combination that makes a fourth line dangerous rather than merely safe.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The hands are ordinary and the playmaking is minimal; everything he produces comes from arriving first and shooting from close.”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, four years at Princeton, and a career made entirely out of speed and willingness.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 898 minutes

Expected goals: 55.9%; 93rd pct
Shot attempts: 59.1%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 39 against. Expected: 42.9 and 33.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

93rd

The numbers rank him 21 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 — 76 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 65th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.74 a game
Distance: 2.02 miles a game
Hardest shot: 80.3 mph; 20th 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 · 898 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: CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.9% — level with the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 898 minutes at five-on-five — 45th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jesperi Kotkaniemi	57.6%	54.4%	53.5%
Sean Walker	55.3%	56.4%	57.5%
Martin Necas	51.6%	58.7%	56.4%

57.6% together, 54.4% for him apart and 53.5% for Kotkaniemi apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

164 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 55% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.