This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Jeff Skinner

Thirty-three goals at thirty off 11.49 shots per 60 — the 97th percentile — in the third year of the contract everybody had written off.

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

2010-11	CAR	82	31	32	63	+3	46	6	0	2	215	14.4	16:44
2011-12	CAR	64	20	24	44	-8	56	4	0	5	210	9.5	18:37
2012-13	CAR	42	13	11	24	-21	26	5	0	0	159	8.2	18:28
2013-14	CAR	71	33	21	54	-14	22	11	0	6	274	12.0	17:12
2014-15	CAR	77	18	13	31	-24	18	4	0	2	235	7.7	16:03
2015-16	CAR	82	28	23	51	-2	38	4	0	7	258	10.8	16:17
2016-17	CAR	79	37	26	63	-3	28	7	0	4	281	13.2	17:44
2017-18	CAR	82	24	25	49	-27	34	4	0	2	277	8.7	16:42
2018-19	BUF	82	40	23	63	0	36	8	0	7	268	14.9	18:31
2019-20	BUF	59	14	9	23	-22	18	0	0	1	183	7.6	16:29
2020-21	BUF	53	7	7	14	-11	14	1	0	0	111	6.3	14:31
2021-22	BUF	80	33	30	63	-14	42	5	0	4	262	12.6	17:06
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	853	298	244	542	-143	378	59	0	40	2733	10.9	17:02

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

33 goals and 30 assists in 80 games — 63 points at 17:06 a night, minus-14, with 5 power-play goals on 262 shots, converting at 12.6 per cent, and 42 penalty minutes.

Thirty-three goals two seasons after scoring 7 in 53. The eight-year contract signed in 2019 had become the standing joke of the league, and this was the year it stopped being one.

11.49 shots per 60 is the 97th percentile among the league’s forwards. Two hundred and sixty-two attempts in 80 games.

49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,108 minutes, the 51st percentile. His ice went 63-64 against an expectation of 52.72-53.97 — ten goals of scoring above what the chances predicted and ten more conceded than they did.

The Finesse Game

56 per cent of his attempts came from inside the slot at a median of 21 feet, off a 94.9 mph release at the 84th percentile. Close, central, hard and constant — the most repeatable goal-scoring profile on this roster and the reason to believe 33 rather than 7.

2.73 even-strength points per 60 is the 88th percentile and 2.24 takeaways per 60 the 85th. He wins pucks below the goal line and comes out of the corner with them, which at 5-11 is genuinely unusual.

2.28 giveaways per 60 is the price, and it is the ordinary price of a winger who holds the puck in traffic.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 200, and there is nothing here. 1.27 hits per 60 is the 9th percentile and 0.88 blocks the 9th. He is not part of how Buffalo defends and never has been at any of his stops.

1.3 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 4th percentile among forwards at a top speed of 21.8, the 15th. He does not accelerate and he is not fast, which is astonishing for a man who scores from the slot 33 times, and says the separation is entirely about where he chooses to stand.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2010 by Carolina, a Calder Trophy at eighteen, 853 games and 542 points, and a minus-143 across a career spent almost entirely on bad teams.

He is 30, with five years left. Buffalo has spent three seasons being told it made the worst contract in hockey and has just watched the man score 33 goals from the front of the net at an age when that skill usually holds. The defensive half will never come; the question was always whether the goals would, and last season they did.

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
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“56 per cent of his attempts came from inside the slot at a median of 21 feet”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“1.27 hits per 60 is the 9th percentile and 0.88 blocks the 9th”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,108 minutes

Expected goals: 49.4%; 51st pct
Shot attempts: 51.4%; 68th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 63 for, 64 against. Expected: 52.7 and 54.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

38th

Numbers

51st

The 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 — 58 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 33rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.36 a game
Distance: 2.70 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.9 mph; 90th 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

2021-22 · 1108 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, 2021-22

The club: BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,108 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tage Thompson	49.4%	49.6%	45.4%
Rasmus Dahlin	47.0%	51.4%	46.0%
Alex Tuch	53.9%	46.1%	45.9%

49.4% together, 49.6% for him apart and 45.4% for Thompson apart. Thompson was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Thompson 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

327 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 33 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.