This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Erik Cernak
Tampa Bay Lightning Defense
Fifty-eight shots on goal from beyond forty feet and none of them went in, at 230 pounds.
| 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 | TBL | 70 | 2 | 14 | 16 | +8 | 53 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 87 | 2.3 | 19:14 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 296 | 18 | 57 | 75 | +59 | 254 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 490 | 3.7 | 19:15 |
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
2 goals and 14 assists in 70 games — 16 points — at 19:14 a night. Plus-8, 87 shots at 2.3 per cent, one shorthanded, 53 penalty minutes.
52.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,109 minutes, the 64th percentile, with his ice at 46-45 against an expectation of 48.65-44.45.
He started 46.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 31st percentile: 300 attacking draws against 344 defensive ones. That is the hardest deployment on this blue line, and a 64th-percentile chance share out of it is a good defensive season.
The Finesse Game
87 shots at a median of 50 feet, with 68 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 3 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty feet: 58 shots on goal and no goals at all. From twenty to forty: 23 shots and one goal, 4.35 per cent, below the league rate for defencemen of 8.83. Inside twenty: four shots and none.
Eighty-five shots on goal in a season and one of them went in. Against a league rate of 3.17 per cent from beyond forty, fifty-eight shots should have returned about two goals.
120 tracked attempts, 29 of them slap shots — a 24.2 per cent share, the third-highest on this blue line. 91.7 mph at the 57th percentile.
Eighteen goals in 296 career games at a 3.7 per cent shooting percentage. There is no offensive part of this file and the club has never asked for one: the 14 assists come from moving the puck up the wall and going back to the front of his net.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 230 pounds, with 53 penalty minutes in 70 games and 254 in 296 career games — nearly a minute a game across five seasons.
Top speed 22.6 mph at the 67th percentile, 0.4 bursts above twenty a game at the 21st, 2.67 miles a game at the 59th. He is quicker than the size suggests and does not sprint.
He is punishing and he clears the crease. At 230 pounds on the hardest starts of this club’s blue line, the method is contact: he takes the body at the net front and along the wall and ends possessions rather than delaying them.
He is also, at that rate of penalty minutes, giving something back. Nearly a minute a game of penalties from a defenceman who does not fight is the cost of playing this way.
The Intangibles
Forty-third overall in 2015, the second round, five seasons, 296 games, 75 points, and a plus-59 across all of them, with two Stanley Cups.
18 goals and 57 assists in five years. He has never scored more than four in a season and has never been asked to.
He is twenty-six, on a long contract, and the file has been the same every year: nineteen minutes, the hard end of the rink, a positive chance share, and no points.
That is a real second-pair defenceman and the counting line will never show it.
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.
“He is punishing and he clears the crease.”
“At 230 pounds on the hardest starts of this club's blue line, the method is contact: he takes the body at the net front and along the wall and ends possessions rather than delaying them.”
“Nearly a minute a game of penalties from a defenceman who does not fight is the cost of playing this way.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,109 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.3%
- 69th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.6%
- 67th 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: 46 for, 45 against. Expected: 48.6 and 44.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 — 69 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 87th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.41 a game
- Distance
- 2.67 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.7 mph
- 49th 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 90.0
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 · 1109 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, 2022-23
- The club
- TBL took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.3% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,109 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ian Cole | 54.5% | 49.6% | 52.3% |
| Brandon Hagel | 53.9% | 51.2% | 53.9% |
| Alex Killorn | 52.8% | 52.0% | 46.7% |
54.5% together, 49.6% for him apart and 52.3% for Cole apart. He was worse away from Cole, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Cole did.
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
118 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.