This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Erik Cernak
Tampa Bay Lightning Defense
The 94th-percentile hit rate, the 98th-percentile penalties drawn and the 4th-percentile giveaways, at 6-4.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | TBL | 58 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +25 | 58 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 107 | 4.7 | 19:15 |
| 2019-20 | TBL | 67 | 5 | 7 | 12 | +11 | 59 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 125 | 4.0 | 18:57 |
| 2020-21 | TBL | 46 | 5 | 13 | 18 | +8 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 5.9 | 19:47 |
| 2021-22 | TBL | 55 | 1 | 12 | 13 | +7 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86 | 1.2 | 19:09 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 226 | 16 | 43 | 59 | +51 | 201 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 403 | 4.0 | 19:15 |
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
55 games, 1 goal and 12 assists at 19:09 a night, plus-7, forty-six penalty minutes, 86 shots. Forty-third overall in 2015 by Los Angeles — the second round — four seasons, 226 games, 59 points.
The Finesse Game
0.97 giveaways per 60 is the 4th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games — the 10th-fewest of the 202 — against 1.20 takeaways at the 70th.
53.4 per cent of the expected goals is the 78th percentile and 53.0 per cent of the attempts the 78th, out of 41.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 107th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
A top-quarter possession share out of a bottom-sixth chair. That is the most valuable combination on this blue line and it is not close.
One goal from eighty-six shots is 1.2 per cent, the 6th percentile, from a 50-foot median with seventy-eight per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet. There is no offence here at all and none of the ice was given to him for it: 0:05 a night on the power play.
The Physical Game
9.40 hits per 60 is the 94th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-4 and 230 pounds.
And 1.08 penalties drawn per 60 is the 98th percentile against 1.08 taken at the 89th. He is the 4th-most-fouled defenceman in the league and one of the twenty-five who foul most, and the net comes out at exactly zero.
Forty-six penalty minutes in fifty-five games.
The Intangibles
2:49 a night short-handed is the 92nd percentile among defencemen, on a club that finished 8th in the league on the kill.
22.8 mph is the 91st percentile and 8.14 miles per 60 the 17th, against 1.7 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 56th.
Fast for the size, and covering very little ground per minute — a defenceman who closes rather than chases.
He is 25, with fifty-nine points in 226 games. The hits, the calls he draws, the giveaway ledger, the kill and a 78th-percentile chance share out of the sixth-hardest chair on the club are five things a contender pays for. Thirteen points is what he gives back, and he has never played seventy games in a season — fifty-eight, sixty-seven, forty-six and fifty-five across four years.
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.
- 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.
“9.40 hits per 60 is the 94th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-4 and 230 pounds.”
“2:49 a night short-handed is the 92nd percentile among defencemen, on a club that finished 8th in the league on the kill.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 875 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.4%
- 79th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53%
- 78th 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: 38 for, 36 against. Expected: 38.5 and 33.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 8 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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 · 55 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 93rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.55 a game
- Distance
- 2.60 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.7 mph
- 59th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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 · 875 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
- TBL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.4% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 875 minutes at five-on-five — 47th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan McDonagh | 49.7% | 56.4% | 49.6% |
| Mikhail Sergachev | 54.9% | 52.6% | 52.0% |
| Anthony Cirelli | 55.8% | 52.3% | 54.1% |
49.7% together, 56.4% for him apart and 49.6% for McDonagh apart. He was better away from McDonagh, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost McDonagh.
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
122 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 0 of them goals. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.