This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Erik Johnson
Colorado Avalanche Defense
A 101.0 mph shot at the 94th percentile, blocks at the 92nd, and a first-overall pick playing seventeen minutes at thirty-four.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08 | STL | 69 | 5 | 28 | 33 | -9 | 28 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 105 | 4.8 | 18:11 |
| 2009-10 | STL | 79 | 10 | 29 | 39 | +1 | 79 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 186 | 5.4 | 21:27 |
| 2010-11 | STL/COL | 77 | 8 | 21 | 29 | -13 | 56 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 161 | 5.0 | 22:49 |
| 2011-12 | COL | 73 | 4 | 22 | 26 | -7 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 155 | 2.6 | 20:50 |
| 2012-13 | COL | 31 | 0 | 4 | 4 | -3 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 64 | 0.0 | 20:45 |
| 2013-14 | COL | 80 | 9 | 30 | 39 | +5 | 61 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 157 | 5.7 | 23:00 |
| 2014-15 | COL | 47 | 12 | 11 | 23 | +2 | 33 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 115 | 10.4 | 24:25 |
| 2015-16 | COL | 73 | 11 | 16 | 27 | -19 | 50 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 175 | 6.3 | 23:27 |
| 2016-17 | COL | 46 | 2 | 15 | 17 | -6 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 96 | 2.1 | 22:05 |
| 2017-18 | COL | 62 | 9 | 16 | 25 | +3 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 168 | 5.4 | 25:26 |
| 2018-19 | COL | 80 | 7 | 18 | 25 | +8 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 144 | 4.9 | 21:49 |
| 2019-20 | COL | 59 | 3 | 13 | 16 | +9 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 99 | 3.0 | 21:03 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 13:26 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 77 | 8 | 17 | 25 | +22 | 24 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 139 | 5.8 | 17:17 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 857 | 88 | 241 | 329 | -5 | 502 | 22 | 4 | 19 | 1769 | 5.0 | 21:38 |
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
8 goals and 17 assists in 77 games — 25 points at 17:17 a night, plus-22, with 24 penalty minutes.
50.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,099 minutes, the 54th percentile among defencemen. His ice went 57-42 against an expectation of 43.45-42.46 — fourteen more goals for than the chances promised.
Seventy-seven games is the most he has played since 2018-19, in a fourteenth season that ended with a Stanley Cup.
The Finesse Game
His top shot speed was 101.0 mph, the 94th percentile among defencemen and 6.27 shots per 60 is the 86th. Eight goals from a third pair, from a median of 50 feet, on the strength of the shot alone.
1.58 takeaways per 60 is the 90th percentile among defencemen and 1.31 giveaways is the 22nd. 1.19 even-strength points per 60 is the 76th percentile, and only 4 per cent of his points came on the power play.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 225. 7.44 hits per 60 is the 87th percentile among defencemen and 6.13 blocks is the 92nd. He is the physical defenceman on a blue line that otherwise has one.
2:36 a night shorthanded is the 84th percentile among defencemen.
22.2 mph is the 63rd percentile and 8.25 miles per 60 is the 28th. He is 34 and he plays 17 minutes, and the second figure follows from the third.
The Intangibles
First overall in 2006 by St. Louis, and 857 NHL games at 34 with 329 points and a career minus-5.
With Nazem Kadri on the ice Colorado took 57.6 per cent of the chances and Johnson without him was at 47.5, across 643 attempts together and 1,420 apart. Kadri has gone to Calgary. The sixteen years and the number one overall are the story everybody tells; the ten-point split is the one that matters to this season.
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
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.
“7.44 hits per 60 is the 87th percentile among defencemen and 6.13 blocks is the 92nd.”
“2:36 a night shorthanded is the 84th percentile among defencemen.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,099 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.5%
- 69th 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: 57 for, 42 against. Expected: 43.5 and 42.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2021-22 · 77 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 75th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.62 a game
- Distance
- 2.37 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 101.0 mph
- 96th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 · 1099 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, 2021-22
- The club
- COL took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,099 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nazem Kadri | 57.6% | 47.5% | 53.8% |
| Andre Burakovsky | 55.8% | 48.6% | 52.6% |
| J.T. Compher | 46.5% | 51.9% | 49.1% |
57.6% together, 47.5% for him apart and 53.8% for Kadri apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
170 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.