Photo by Pens Through My Lens, CC BY-SA 4.0

Erik Gudbranson

The 3rd overall pick in 2010, and the 1st percentile in expected goals.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2011-12	FLA	72	2	6	8	-19	78	0	0	0	76	2.6	14:12
2012-13	FLA	32	0	4	4	-22	47	0	0	0	49	0.0	18:45
2013-14	FLA	65	3	6	9	-7	114	0	0	0	92	3.3	17:59
2014-15	FLA	76	4	9	13	-4	58	0	0	0	110	3.6	18:37
2015-16	FLA	64	2	7	9	+3	49	0	0	0	73	2.7	20:07
2016-17	VAN	30	1	5	6	-14	18	0	0	1	40	2.5	20:20
2017-18	VAN	52	2	3	5	-7	35	0	0	0	53	3.8	18:25
2018-19	VAN/PIT	76	2	8	10	-20	87	0	0	1	94	2.1	18:14
2019-20	PIT/ANA	51	4	5	9	0	95	0	0	0	78	5.1	19:22
2020-21	OTT/NSH	45	1	3	4	-12	59	0	0	1	58	1.7	17:54
2021-22	CGY	78	6	11	17	+15	68	0	0	0	129	4.7	18:08
2022-23	CBJ	70	1	12	13	-24	57	0	0	1	102	1.0	21:18
2023-24	CBJ	78	6	20	26	-14	74	0	0	1	91	6.6	19:40
2024-25	CBJ	16	0	4	4	+1	6	0	0	0	12	0.0	17:46
2025-26	CBJ	37	1	2	3	+6	19	0	0	0	34	2.9	17:46
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	842	35	105	140	-118	864	0	0	5	1091	3.2	18:33

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 2 assists in 37 games, plus-6, at 17:46 a night. His 842nd career game.

The Finesse Game

None, and there never really was any. 52 unblocked attempts from a median of 56 feet — not one of them from inside 20 — and 1 goal. 35 goals in 842 career games.

2 assists in 37 games. He is on the ice to defend and to be large.

The Physical Game

6-5, 222, and it is the entire career. He fights, he clears the crease, and he is genuinely difficult to get past in a straight line.

The skating is the problem and has been since he was 20. He cannot recover when beaten and he is beaten often, because forwards have learned that the way past him is to change direction.

The Intangibles

The numbers are the worst of any player in this edition. 38 and a half per cent of the expected goals — 1st percentile — and 41.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 2nd. Across 547 minutes the expected goals ran 16.8 to 26.0 against.

There is no roster context to hide behind. Columbus finished 8th in even-strength expected goals for and thirteenth against; every other defenceman here posted a share above 50. Gudbranson posted 38.

He is 34, the third pick in a draft, and 842 games into a career built almost entirely on how he looks rather than on what the ice does when he is on it. Nothing on this page is ambiguous.

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
39% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 5th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 547 minutes

Expected goals: 39.2%; 2nd pct
Shot attempts: 41.3%; 2nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 19 against. Expected: 16.8 and 26.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

1st

Numbers

2nd

The two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 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, 2025-26 · 37 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.46 a game
Distance: 2.42 miles a game
Hardest shot: 98.6 mph; 92nd 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 0 assists, 14 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 547 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, 2025-26

The club: CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.2% — 12.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: 547 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Boone Jenner	40.6%	38.6%	53.5%
Ivan Provorov	35.2%	40.7%	52.7%
Adam Fantilli	35.5%	40.7%	54.3%

40.6% together, 38.6% for him apart and 53.5% for Jenner apart. Jenner was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

52 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 60 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 87% from beyond forty.