Erik Karlsson

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

50 games, 10 goals and 25 assists at 23:28 a night, minus-14, fourteen penalty minutes, 117 shots. Fifteenth overall in 2008 by Ottawa, thirteen seasons, 838 games, 660 points, and a career average of 25:28 a night.

The Finesse Game

1.57 even-strength points per 60 is the 93rd percentile among defencemen and 8.5 per cent shooting is the 93rd. Thirty-five points in fifty games is a fifty-seven-point pace at 32.

5.98 shots per 60 is the 82nd percentile from a 46-foot median in the 11th — he shoots from closer than eighty-nine per cent of the position, at 98.7 mph.

2.66 takeaways per 60 is the 2nd-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games. 3.22 giveaways per 60 is the 4th-most. Nobody at the position is nearer both ends of that ledger — the puck is on his stick constantly and both columns say so.

51.7 per cent of the expected goals and 49.7 per cent of the attempts on a club that finished 31st in the league in attempt share, out of 51.8 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 277th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

A two-point gap between his chance share and his attempt share, on the club with the 2nd-worst attempt share in hockey, is the strongest thing in the file.

The Physical Game

0.92 hits per 60 is the 2nd-fewest of the 202 defencemen who played forty games and 2.30 blocks per 60 is the 3rd-fewest.

He does not defend by body and he does not defend by shin pad. At 6-0 and 185 pounds that has been true for thirteen seasons and it is not a decline.

0.61 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.36 taken, and the net at the 96th percentile. Fourteen penalty minutes in fifty games.

The Intangibles

5.4 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 98th percentile among defencemen, on a 22.6 mph top speed at the 83rd.

Against 8.25 miles per 60 at only the 29th percentile. He sprints more often than almost any defenceman in the league and covers less total ground than seventy per cent of them — short, explosive shifts rather than long ones, at fifty games played.

He is 32 with 838 games, 660 points and a career minus-77. The point rate, the takeaways, the sprints and the shot are four genuinely elite figures. The hits, the blocks, the giveaways and fifty games played are the other half, and thirteen seasons at 25:28 a night have not once been spent on a club that finished where his numbers suggest it should.