Erik Gustafsson
Detroit Red Wings Defense
18 points, a minus-19, and a puck-moving defenceman on his eighth organisation.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | CHI | 41 | 0 | 14 | 14 | +11 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 0.0 | 15:27 |
| 2017-18 | CHI | 35 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 7.0 | 18:33 |
| 2018-19 | CHI | 79 | 17 | 43 | 60 | -6 | 34 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 160 | 10.6 | 22:35 |
| 2019-20 | CHI/CGY | 66 | 6 | 23 | 29 | -9 | 27 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 103 | 5.8 | 20:23 |
| 2020-21 | PHI/MTL | 29 | 1 | 11 | 12 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 3.0 | 16:42 |
| 2021-22 | CHI | 59 | 3 | 15 | 18 | -4 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 3.8 | 16:13 |
| 2022-23 | WSH/TOR | 70 | 7 | 35 | 42 | +9 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 122 | 5.7 | 19:46 |
| 2023-24 | NYR | 76 | 6 | 25 | 31 | +3 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 93 | 6.5 | 17:24 |
| 2024-25 | DET | 60 | 2 | 16 | 18 | -19 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 3.0 | 16:19 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 515 | 47 | 193 | 240 | -15 | 163 | 7 | 0 | 6 | 786 | 6.0 | 18:31 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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 16 assists in 60 games for 18 points, minus-19, on 16:19 a night.
50.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 59th percentile — the best share on the blue line — and on-ice goals of 26-38 against an expected 33-32. That is thirteen goals of finishing and goaltending going the wrong way, and the minus-19 is largely fiction.
The Finesse Game
The puck movement is the reason he keeps getting jobs. He escapes pressure, moves it early, and has a genuine power-play instinct — 16 assists in 60 games in a third-pair role is a fair return.
67 shots and 2 goals; the release does not threaten anybody and he has never scored much from the point despite the reputation.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 190, and light. He does not clear a crease, does not win board battles, and is the second man to most pucks in his own corner.
20 penalty minutes over 60 games. The defensive work is the whole reason he has moved so often.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, eight organisations in eleven seasons, and a career of being signed for the power play and released when the goals against pile up.
At 33 the projection is unchanged. The minus-19 is not a fair verdict — the chance share was the best on the blue line — and the pattern of eight clubs is.
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
- 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.
“He escapes pressure, moves it early, and has a genuine power-play instinct”
“The puck movement is the reason he keeps getting jobs.”
“He does not clear a crease, does not win board battles, and is the second man to most pucks in his own corner.”
“He does not clear a crease, does not win board battles, and is the second man to most pucks in his own corner.”
“The defensive work is the whole reason he has moved so often.”
“Undrafted, eight organisations in eleven seasons, and a career of being signed for the power play and released when the goals against pile up.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 870 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.7%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.6%
- 70th 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: 26 for, 38 against. Expected: 33.0 and 32.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 55 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2024-25 · 60 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 59th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.52 a game
- Distance
- 2.46 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.2 mph
- 80th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 870 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, 2024-25
- The club
- DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.7% — 2.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 870 minutes at five-on-five — 41st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justin Holl | 52.5% | 47.1% | 50.2% |
| Alex DeBrincat | 51.4% | 50.4% | 50.9% |
| Patrick Kane | 50.2% | 50.9% | 47.7% |
52.5% together, 47.1% for him apart and 50.2% for Holl apart. He was worse away from Holl, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Holl 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
116 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 55 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.