Erik Haula

A 13-year veteran who takes the faceoffs and the defensive-zone starts, brought in to steady the middle of the lineup.

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

2013-14	MIN	46	6	9	15	+14	29	0	1	1	56	10.7	10:09
2014-15	MIN	72	7	7	14	-7	32	1	0	1	92	7.6	12:09
2015-16	MIN	76	14	20	34	+21	24	0	2	2	99	14.1	12:44
2016-17	MIN	72	15	11	26	+5	28	1	0	4	134	11.2	13:49
2017-18	VGK	76	29	26	55	-16	37	11	0	4	175	16.6	17:22
2018-19	VGK	15	2	5	7	+1	10	0	0	0	26	7.7	16:35
2019-20	CAR/FLA	48	12	12	24	+1	22	4	0	2	92	13.0	15:50
2020-21	NSH	51	9	12	21	+4	14	1	2	2	85	10.6	16:00
2021-22	BOS	78	18	26	44	+19	47	2	0	3	141	12.8	15:06
2022-23	NJD	80	14	27	41	+13	47	2	2	0	164	8.5	16:38
2023-24	NJD	76	16	19	35	-1	54	1	1	2	155	10.3	16:53
2024-25	NJD	69	11	10	21	-6	39	2	0	1	110	10.0	14:42
2025-26	NSH	81	14	24	38	-15	64	4	1	1	127	11.0	16:40
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	840	167	208	375	+33	447	29	9	23	1456	11.5	15:00

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

14 goals and 38 points in 81 games, on 16 and a half minutes a night, with a minus-15 that reflects the assignments as much as the player.

The Finesse Game

A competent, unspectacular offensive player who has scored between 12 and 20 goals in most healthy seasons. He shoots accurately from the slot, he can make a play off the wall, and he does not turn the puck over in bad places.

The value is in the details. He wins faceoffs, he is reliable on the penalty kill, and he is comfortable taking a draw in his own zone with a lead in the third period. Those are the shifts that decide games and nobody notices who takes them.

The skating is good enough to keep up and not good enough to create.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 191, so not a physical presence, but he is a persistent one — he is on the right side of the puck, he blocks shots, and he takes the body when it is the right play. 64 penalty minutes is more than a player of his size usually accumulates and reflects a certain amount of nuisance.

The Intangibles

Seventh-round pick, more than 840 games, and half a dozen organisations that have wanted the same thing from him. That kind of career happens to players who are trusted rather than talented.

He is 35. The role — third-line centre, penalty kill, defensive draws — is one that survives a decline in foot speed better than most, which is presumably the thinking behind bringing him in.

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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,036 minutes

Expected goals: 46%; 22nd pct
Shot attempts: 48.7%; 43rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 48 against. Expected: 39.7 and 46.7.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

67th

Numbers

22nd

The report ranks him 45 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.38 a game
Distance: 2.72 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.3 mph; 66th 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 — 3 goals, 3 assists, 21 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with NSH · 1036 minutes at five-on-five

Michael Buntingoff the roster40%
Jonathan Marchessault34%
Steven Stamkos26%

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: NSH took 47.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.0% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,036 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Michael Bunting	49.4%	43.4%	48.1%
Jonathan Marchessault	40.2%	49.2%	45.4%
Nicolas Hague	44.4%	46.7%	48.0%

49.4% together, 43.4% for him apart and 48.1% for Bunting apart. He was worse away from Bunting, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Bunting 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

207 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 8 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.