This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Gustav Forsling
Florida Panthers Defense
The 7th-most takeaways of the 202 qualified defencemen and the 9th-most even-strength points — from a fifth-round pick on his third club.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CHI | 38 | 2 | 3 | 5 | +3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 4.2 | 14:49 |
| 2017-18 | CHI | 41 | 3 | 10 | 13 | -2 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 82 | 3.7 | 19:09 |
| 2018-19 | CHI | 43 | 3 | 6 | 9 | -9 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 57 | 5.3 | 17:05 |
| 2020-21 | FLA | 43 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +17 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 5.3 | 19:57 |
| 2021-22 | FLA | 71 | 10 | 27 | 37 | +41 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 145 | 6.9 | 21:13 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 236 | 23 | 58 | 81 | +50 | 68 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 426 | 5.4 | 18:51 |
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
10 goals and 27 assists in 71 games — 37 points and a plus-41, the best on the club — at 21:13 a night, the 66th percentile among defencemen — with 18 penalty minutes. 2:28 a night short-handed is the 79th percentile.
56.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,285 minutes, the 15th-highest of the 202 qualified defencemen.
The Finesse Game
1.68 even-strength points per 60 is the 9th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen — and not one of his thirty-seven points came on the power play. He has 0:11 a night on the man advantage and two power-play goals in 236 NHL games.
That is the most unusual line on this blue line: an offensive defenceman’s production, entirely at even strength, from a man the club does not put on the power play.
5.77 shots per 60 is the 80th percentile and ten goals on 145 is 6.9 per cent, the 83rd. 99.3 mph is the 22nd-hardest recorded shot of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers.
2.03 takeaways per 60 is the 7th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen, against 2.11 giveaways at the 74th. He takes the puck off people at a rate almost no defenceman matches and gives it back nearly as often, which is the ledger of a man who is always involved.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 199. 1.79 hits per 60 is the 24th-fewest of the 202 qualified defencemen and 3.42 blocks is the 26th percentile. There is no contact game at all.
22.6 mph is the 85th percentile and 4.1 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 96th — he sprints more than almost every defenceman in the league, at 8.62 miles per 60, the 68th percentile. He does not cover unusual ground; he covers it in bursts.
0.36 penalties taken per 60 is the 15th percentile — eighteen minutes in seventy-one games at twenty-one a night, with a positive net at the 83rd.
The Intangibles
One hundred and twenty-sixth overall in 2014, the fifth round, and 236 NHL games at 26 with 81 points and a career plus-50 across three organisations.
Two Chicago seasons that went nowhere, then two here at a plus-58 combined. The change of club is the whole of the difference the record can show, and Florida is the best team in the league.
With Radko Gudas he took 54.8 per cent over 1,428 attempts and 58.5 without him. With Aleksander Barkov 57.6, with Carter Verhaeghe 58.1, with Brandon Montour 58.7. Every separation puts him above 55, which is the mark of a defenceman who is not being carried.
MacKenzie Weegar has gone to Calgary and Aaron Ekblad has played 96 games in two seasons. The 21 minutes a night are going up.
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
- 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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
5 of 121 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.1%, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
“He takes the puck off people at a rate almost no defenceman matches and gives it back nearly as often”
“He does not cover unusual ground; he covers it in bursts.”
“There is no contact game at all.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,285 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.3%
- 91st pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.7%
- 91st 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: 76 for, 45 against. Expected: 66.2 and 51.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 90th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.46 a game
- Distance
- 3.05 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 99.3 mph
- 91st 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 · 1285 minutes at five-on-five
- Radko Gudas64%
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
- FLA took 56.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.3% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,285 minutes at five-on-five — 89th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radko Gudas | 54.8% | 58.5% | 58.3% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 58.1% | 55.6% | 59.6% |
| Jonathan Huberdeau | 56.1% | 56.4% | 52.3% |
54.8% together, 58.5% for him apart and 58.3% for Gudas 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
190 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 63% from beyond forty.