This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Gustav Forsling
Florida Panthers Defense
Plus-56, the best mark of any skater in this edition, from a fifth-round pick who was claimed off waivers.
| 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 | FLA | 82 | 13 | 28 | 41 | +19 | 40 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 209 | 6.2 | 23:26 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 79 | 10 | 29 | 39 | +56 | 43 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 160 | 6.3 | 22:09 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 397 | 46 | 115 | 161 | +125 | 151 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 795 | 5.8 | 20:27 |
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
79 games, 10 goals and 29 assists for 39 points, 1 on the power play, 43 penalty minutes, 22:09 a night and plus-56. He took 56.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,408 minutes, the 92nd percentile, and his ice went 70-34 against an expectation of 64.33-50.29.
The plus-56 is the best mark of any skater in this edition. Six goals of finishing above expectation and sixteen fewer conceded than the chances called for: the second of those is Sergei Bobrovsky and the first is not.
The Finesse Game
160 shots at a median of 56 feet with 78 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 6.3 per cent.
115 career assists in 397 games. He moves the puck out of his own zone before the forecheck arrives, which is the single most valuable thing he does with it, and he skates it out when the pass is not there. The offence is a by-product and 39 points is about the ceiling.
The Physical Game
He defends with his stick and his gaps rather than his body, closing early and taking the puck instead of the man.
He is 6-1 and 199 and is almost never beaten wide, which at that size is a skating achievement rather than a physical one. 43 penalty minutes in 79 games at twenty-two minutes a night is a very low rate for a defenceman who defends this much.
The Intangibles
A fifth-round pick in 2014 by Vancouver, traded twice and then claimed off waivers by Florida in 2021. Seven seasons, 397 games, and a career plus-125.
He was available to all thirty-one other clubs for nothing four years ago. He is now, by results, the best defensive defenceman in the league, and the gap between those two sentences is the most interesting thing in this chapter.
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.
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He defends with his stick and his gaps rather than his body, closing early and taking the puck instead of the man.”
“He moves the puck out of his own zone before the forecheck arrives, which is the single most valuable thing he does with it, and he skates it out when the pass is not there.”
“He defends with his stick and his gaps rather than his body, closing early and taking the puck instead of the man.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,408 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.1%
- 92nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 58.1%
- 97th 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: 70 for, 34 against. Expected: 64.3 and 50.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 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 — 75 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 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 74th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.14 a game
- Distance
- 3.04 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 100.5 mph
- 94th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 · 1408 minutes at five-on-five
- Aaron Ekblad51%
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
- FLA took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.1% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,408 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Ekblad | 55.2% | 57.0% | 53.4% |
| Sam Reinhart | 57.9% | 55.0% | 59.5% |
| Aleksander Barkov | 63.5% | 52.3% | 57.9% |
55.2% together, 57.0% for him apart and 53.4% for Ekblad apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
220 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.