This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Erik Karlsson

The most career assists of any defenceman in this edition, and the fourth-most five-on-five ice of anybody in it.

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

2009-10	OTT	60	5	21	26	-5	24	1	0	0	112	4.5	20:07
2010-11	OTT	75	13	32	45	-30	50	4	0	4	182	7.1	23:31
2011-12	OTT	81	19	59	78	+16	42	3	0	5	261	7.3	25:19
2012-13	OTT	17	6	8	14	+8	8	2	1	2	79	7.6	27:09
2013-14	OTT	82	20	54	74	-15	36	5	0	1	257	7.8	27:04
2014-15	OTT	82	21	45	66	+7	42	6	0	3	292	7.2	27:15
2015-16	OTT	82	16	66	82	-2	50	1	0	3	248	6.5	28:58
2016-17	OTT	77	17	54	71	+10	28	4	0	5	218	7.8	26:50
2017-18	OTT	71	9	53	62	-25	36	3	0	2	196	4.6	26:44
2018-19	SJS	53	3	42	45	+6	22	2	0	1	169	1.8	24:29
2019-20	SJS	56	6	34	40	-15	16	1	1	0	120	5.0	24:31
2020-21	SJS	52	8	14	22	-18	18	3	0	1	110	7.3	23:36
2021-22	SJS	50	10	25	35	-14	14	0	0	2	117	8.6	23:28
2022-23	SJS	82	25	76	101	-26	36	5	0	4	209	12.0	25:37
2023-24	PIT	82	11	45	56	+4	44	2	0	4	213	5.2	24:16
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1002	189	628	817	-99	466	42	2	37	2783	6.8	25:23

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

82 games, 11 goals and 45 assists for 56 points, 2 on the power play, 44 penalty minutes, 24:16 a night and plus-4, with 4 game-winners. He took 54.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,606 minutes — the fourth-most of anybody in this edition — and his ice went 76-69 against an expectation of 82.68-70.47.

Seven goals of finishing below what the chances were worth. The 54.0 per cent is the 82nd percentile and the best chance share on the club’s blue line, and 56 points is his lowest total in a season of seventy games or more since 2010-11.

The Finesse Game

300 attempts at a median of 52 feet with 72 per cent of them from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty, 204 of those on goal, converted at 5.2 per cent against a career 6.79 across 2,783 shots.

628 career assists, the most of any defenceman in this edition. He walks the line rather than shooting from the top of it, and the puck leaves his stick expecting a deflection rather than a save. Forty-five assists in 82 games is still the reason a club plays him twenty-four minutes at 34.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 185 and took 44 penalty minutes.

466 career penalty minutes in 1,002 games. He is a small defenceman by the standards of the position and defends almost entirely by skating — he retrieves pucks by beating the forechecker to them rather than by absorbing him, and there is very little contact in his game at either end.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2008 by Ottawa, fifteen seasons, three organisations, and 817 points in 1,002 games.

A career minus-99, which is what fifteen seasons of enormous minutes on clubs that were often outscored will do. He scored 101 points in San Jose two seasons ago and 56 here, and the gap between those numbers is most of what Pittsburgh is arguing about.

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
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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
54.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.1, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:35 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“628 career assists, the most of any defenceman in this edition.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is a small defenceman by the standards of the position and defends almost entirely by skating — he retrieves pucks by beating the forechecker to them rather than by absorbing him, and there is very little contact in his game at either end.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He walks the line rather than shooting from the top of it, and the puck leaves his stick expecting a deflection rather than a save.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,606 minutes

Expected goals: 54%; 83rd pct
Shot attempts: 54.4%; 87th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 76 for, 69 against. Expected: 82.7 and 70.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

87th

Numbers

83rd

The two rank him within 4 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 23.2 mph; 96th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.41 a game
Distance: 3.41 miles a game
Hardest shot: 101.5 mph; 98th 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

2023-24 · 1606 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, 2023-24

The club: PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.0% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,606 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Marcus Pettersson	54.7%	53.2%	51.7%
Sidney Crosby	56.8%	52.0%	51.4%
Evgeni Malkin	55.3%	53.3%	51.3%

54.7% together, 53.2% for him apart and 51.7% for Pettersson apart. Pettersson was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Pettersson than for him.

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

300 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.