This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Jeff Skinner

A thousand games, 357 goals, a career minus-130, and not one playoff appearance.

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	BUF	79	35	47	82	+15	39	8	0	3	242	14.5	17:24
2023-24	BUF	74	24	22	46	-2	34	8	0	3	211	11.4	16:00
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1006	357	313	670	-130	451	75	0	46	3186	11.2	16:59

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

74 games in Buffalo, 24 goals and 22 assists for 46 points, 8 on the power play, 34 penalty minutes, 16:00 a night and minus-2. He took 48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 965 minutes, the 44th percentile, and his ice went 46-38 against an expectation of 44.51-46.69, all of it with the Sabres.

Eight goals fewer conceded than the chances called for, which is the goaltending behind him rather than anything he did. He arrives in Edmonton at 32 on the cheapest possible answer to a finishing problem.

The Finesse Game

211 shots at a median of 26 feet with 37 per cent from inside 20, converted at 11.4 per cent against a career 11.2. He is a shooter and the release is still quick at 32.

357 career goals in 1,006 games. He is 5-11 and 200 and turns tight in small spaces, which is what has kept him scoring on bad clubs for fourteen years.

The Physical Game

He does not forecheck hard, does not finish checks, and does not win pucks along the wall.

34 penalty minutes in 74 games is the rate of a man who is never anywhere near the trouble. At 5-11 and 200 he is moved off the puck by anybody who wants to.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2010 out of Toronto, a Calder at 18, and 670 points in 1,006 games. His career plus-minus is minus-130 and he has never played a playoff game.

Fourteen seasons in Carolina and Buffalo is the least fortunate draft outcome of his generation. Put beside Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl he will score, because almost anybody does.

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
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.

sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck hard, does not finish checks, and does not win pucks along the wall.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck hard, does not finish checks, and does not win pucks along the wall.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“At 5-11 and 200 he is moved off the puck by anybody who wants to.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 965 minutes

Expected goals: 48.8%; 45th pct
Shot attempts: 51.3%; 66th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 38 against. Expected: 44.5 and 46.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

45th

The numbers rank him 28 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 61 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 · 74 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 43rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.11 a game
Distance: 2.37 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.9 mph; 88th 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 BUF · 965 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: BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.8% — 0.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 965 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Rasmus Dahlin	50.3%	47.5%	51.8%
Alex Tuch	53.3%	44.8%	48.4%
Tage Thompson	51.8%	46.8%	51.2%

50.3% together, 47.5% for him apart and 51.8% for Dahlin 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

290 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.