This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Erik Haula

Signed out of New Jersey to kill penalties and win defensive-zone draws on the 2nd-best unit in the league.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	759	153	184	337	+48	383	25	8	22	1329	11.5	14:50

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

69 games with New Jersey, 11 goals and 10 assists for 21 points at 14:42 a night, on 110 shots at 10 per cent. 39 penalty minutes. Minus-6. He signed with Nashville in the summer.

That is a fourth-line season and roughly what he has produced for four years running: between 20 and 30 points, a defensive assignment, and a faceoff percentage a club can build a penalty kill around.

The Finesse Game

The release is still decent and 10 per cent on 110 attempts is respectable for the role and the ice time.

He does not create off the rush any more and he does not carry the puck through anybody. The faceoff work is the marketable skill — he is genuinely good on a defensive-zone draw, which is precisely why a club with the 2nd-best penalty kill in hockey went and got him.

The Physical Game

191 pounds and an honest checking game without much force behind it. He finishes checks and does not punish anybody.

39 penalty minutes is slightly more than a fourth-line role should generate, and on this club that matters more than it would elsewhere.

The Intangibles

A seventh-round pick, more than a decade in the league, six organisations, and a Stanley Cup Final with Vegas in 2018.

He knows exactly what he is for at 34 and has never pretended to be anything else, which is why clubs keep signing him to do 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.

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.

faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“The faceoff work is the marketable skill — he is genuinely good on a defensive-zone draw, which is precisely why a club with the 8th-best penalty kill in hockey went and got him.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“a defensive assignment, and a faceoff percentage a club can build a penalty kill around.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He finishes checks and does not punish anybody.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not create off the rush any more and he does not carry the puck through anybody.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 799 minutes

Expected goals: 47.3%; 29th pct
Shot attempts: 48.5%; 38th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 28 for, 36 against. Expected: 29.2 and 32.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

3rd

Numbers

29th

The numbers rank him 26 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 — 60 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 · 69 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 80th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.28 a game
Distance: 2.37 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.0 mph; 60th 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

2024-25 with NJD · 799 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: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 3.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 799 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Paul Cotter	44.2%	50.2%	50.9%
Dawson Mercer	47.1%	47.5%	50.9%
Brett Pesce	49.2%	46.4%	53.1%

44.2% together, 50.2% for him apart and 50.9% for Cotter apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

158 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.