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

Ian Cole

Eight hundred and twenty-six games, 744 penalty minutes, and no power-play goals at all.

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

2010-11	STL	26	1	3	4	+6	35	0	0	0	22	4.5	17:36
2011-12	STL	26	1	5	6	+7	22	0	0	0	18	5.6	15:55
2012-13	STL	15	0	1	1	-4	10	0	0	0	10	0.0	17:45
2013-14	STL	46	3	8	11	+15	31	0	0	0	45	6.7	15:05
2014-15	STL/PIT	74	5	12	17	+14	51	0	0	0	83	6.0	15:59
2015-16	PIT	70	0	12	12	-3	59	0	0	0	72	0.0	17:14
2016-17	PIT	81	5	21	26	+26	72	0	0	1	89	5.6	19:49
2017-18	PIT/CBJ	67	5	15	20	+14	76	0	0	0	84	5.9	17:46
2018-19	COL	71	2	13	15	-1	115	0	0	0	82	2.4	19:45
2019-20	COL	65	4	22	26	+21	36	0	0	1	92	4.3	17:42
2020-21	COL/MIN	54	1	7	8	+21	32	0	0	1	30	3.3	15:52
2021-22	CAR	75	2	17	19	+15	83	0	0	1	77	2.6	17:09
2022-23	TBL	78	3	14	17	+13	61	0	0	0	109	2.8	19:23
2023-24	VAN	78	2	9	11	+10	61	0	0	0	61	3.3	18:41
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	826	34	159	193	+154	744	0	0	4	874	3.9	17:46

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

78 games with Vancouver, 2 goals and 9 assists for 11 points, 61 penalty minutes, 18:41 a night and plus-10. He took 53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,227 minutes, the 81st percentile, and his ice went 53-43 against an expectation of 49.32-42.28.

Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and level at the other end. Fifty-three point eight per cent of the chances is the second-highest share of anybody on this roster.

The Finesse Game

97 attempts at a median of 58 feet with 84 per cent of them from beyond forty and 1 per cent from inside twenty, 60 of those on goal, converted at 3.3 per cent against a career 3.89 across 874 shots.

Thirty-four career goals and no power-play goals at all in 826 games. One attempt in a hundred came from inside twenty feet, which is the most perimeter-bound chart on this club; the puck goes at the net from the blue line to be tipped or it goes to the far wall.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 237 — the heaviest man on this roster — and took 61 penalty minutes.

744 career penalty minutes in 826 games. He is enormously thick through the chest and clears the front of his own net by moving people out of it, and fourteen seasons of that is where those 744 minutes came from.

The Intangibles

Eighteenth overall in 2007 by St. Louis, fourteen seasons, and Utah will be his ninth organisation.

A career plus-154 in 826 games — by a distance the largest figure on this roster. He is 35, he has played for eight clubs, and he has finished on the right side of the ledger in eleven of his fourteen seasons.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
83.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
38% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 8th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He is enormously thick through the chest and clears the front of his own net by moving people out of it, and fourteen seasons of that is where those 744 minutes came from.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“One attempt in a hundred came from inside twenty feet, which is the most perimeter-bound chart on this club; the puck goes at the net from the blue line to be tipped or it goes to the far wall.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“A career plus-154 in 826 games — by a distance the largest figure on this roster.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,227 minutes

Expected goals: 53.8%; 81st pct
Shot attempts: 48.9%; 45th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 43 against. Expected: 49.3 and 42.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

67th

Numbers

81st

The two rank him within 14 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 — 73 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 · 78 games

Top speed: 20.8 mph; 15th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.21 a game
Distance: 2.43 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.9 mph; 70th 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 with VAN · 1227 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: VAN took 52.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 1.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,227 minutes at five-on-five — 85th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tyler Myers	55.3%	53.2%	51.5%
Brock Boeser	47.5%	56.1%	51.3%
Conor Garland	59.1%	51.9%	60.5%

55.3% together, 53.2% for him apart and 51.5% for Myers apart. Myers was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Myers 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

97 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 59 feet. 1% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 84% from beyond forty.