Erik Gustafsson

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

59 games for Chicago, 3 goals and 15 assists at 16:13 a night, minus-4, fourteen penalty minutes, 79 shots. Ninety-third overall in 2012 by Edmonton — the fourth round — six seasons, 309 games, 149 points.

The Finesse Game

Three goals from seventy-nine shots is 3.8 per cent, and 4.95 shots per 60 is the 62nd percentile from a 52-foot median with six per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet and seventy-seven per cent from beyond forty.

1.00 even-strength points per 60 is the 60th percentile and twenty-two per cent of his eighteen points came on the power play, off 1:56 a night at the 78th percentile.

46.2 per cent of the expected goals is the 42nd-lowest of all 202 defencemen and 50.0 per cent of the attempts the 51st percentile. Five points of gap between the two shares says his minutes gave up the dangerous shots and not the volume.

He started 72.8 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end — the 5th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — and produced a 46.2 per cent chance share out of it. Chicago finished 29th in the league in attempt share, which is most of the explanation and is nowhere near all of it.

2.45 giveaways per 60 is the 84th percentile and 0.63 takeaways the 23rd.

His ice went 34-35 against an expectation of 29.3-34.07 — nearly five ahead in front and a goal more against.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 190 pounds, and fourteen penalty minutes in fifty-nine games.

0.125 penalties drawn per 60 is the 10th-fewest of all 202 defencemen, against 0.44 taken.

2.82 hits per 60 is the 31st percentile and 3.45 blocks the 27th, against five seconds a night short-handed at the 3rd percentile. He does not kill, at all.

The Intangibles

8.970 miles per 60 is the 12th-most of the 192 tracked defencemen, against a 22.0 mph top speed at the 53rd percentile and 1.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 43rd.

A great deal of ground covered without pace behind it, which is the reading his possession numbers keep pointing at.

He is 30, a fourth-round pick, with 117 assists in 309 games across five organisations. The mileage, the power-play time and a 2018-19 season of sixty points are the argument for a seventh defenceman who can take a unit. A 42nd-lowest chance share out of the fifth-softest chair in hockey is the argument against a sixth.