This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Erik Gudbranson

Seventy-seven shots on goal from beyond forty feet and none of them went in — second in the league.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	711	28	79	107	-111	765	0	0	4	954	2.9	18:29

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

1 goal and 12 assists in 70 games, minus-24, 57 penalty minutes, 21:18 a night — the most of his twelve seasons.

40.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,302 minutes, the 5th percentile and the eighth-worst share of any skater in the league with 900 minutes. His ice went 40-67 against an expectation of 45.12-65.88.

Read that carefully, because it is the unusual case: the goals against came in almost exactly where the chances said they would. The defensive record is not bad luck and not goaltending. The chances themselves were terrible.

Twelve seasons, 711 games, 28 goals and 107 points.

The Finesse Game

102 shots at a median of 51 feet, 82 per cent from beyond forty — the highest share of any defenceman in this chapter — and 7 per cent from inside twenty.

From beyond forty feet: 77 shots on goal, no goals. That is the second-largest goalless run from the point in the league, behind Colton Parayko’s 93. Inside forty: 20 shots, one goal.

One goal in 70 games on 102 shots. His teammate Ivan Provorov put 74 on goal from beyond forty and also scored none: the two defencemen Columbus used most took 151 shots from the point last season and did not score once, on a club that finished 30th in goals.

The shot measures 96.1 mph at the 84th percentile, which on this evidence is a fact about how hard he can hit a puck and not about anything useful.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 222, and this is the argument for playing him at all. 57 penalty minutes in 70 games, and 765 in his career.

23.4 mph at the 95th percentile is genuinely fast for a man this size, but 0.7 bursts over twenty a game at the 40th says he rarely gets there. 2.82 miles a game at the 69th.

He is heavy, he finishes checks, he fights, and he clears the front of his own net. What he cannot do is defend a rush or move the puck, and 21 minutes a night is four or five more than that skill set supports.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2010, and thirteen years later 28 career goals and an eighth organisation.

He is one of the more instructive draft outcomes in this book: a top-three pick who has had a twelve-year career, more than seven hundred games, and no season in which he was better than a third-pair defenceman.

Columbus signed him for four years at 30 to add size to a young blue line. The size arrived. The 5th-percentile possession share arrived with 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.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
81.6% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is heavy, he finishes checks, he fights, and he clears the front of his own net.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He is heavy, he finishes checks, he fights, and he clears the front of his own net.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“What he cannot do is defend a rush or move the puck, and 21 minutes a night is four or five more than that skill set supports.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,302 minutes

Expected goals: 40.7%; 5th pct
Shot attempts: 42.4%; 6th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 67 against. Expected: 45.1 and 65.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

3rd

Numbers

5th

The two rank him within 2 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 — 50 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: 23.4 mph; 98th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.74 a game
Distance: 2.82 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.1 mph; 78th 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

2022-23 · 1302 minutes at five-on-five

Tim Bernioff the roster43%
Andrew Peeke10%
Jake Bean9%

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 40.7% — 3.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,302 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tim Berni	45.7%	37.0%	44.7%
Johnny Gaudreau	44.6%	39.0%	49.2%
Eric Robinson	41.6%	40.3%	41.1%

45.7% together, 37.0% for him apart and 44.7% for Berni apart. He was worse away from Berni, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Berni 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

136 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 4 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.