This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Joel Eriksson Ek
Minnesota Wild Center
The 3rd-fewest giveaways of 393 forwards, 2:09 a night on the kill, and 57.6 per cent of the expected goals with him on the ice.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | MIN | 15 | 3 | 4 | 7 | +1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 15 | 20.0 | 10:37 |
| 2017-18 | MIN | 75 | 6 | 10 | 16 | +2 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 124 | 4.8 | 12:47 |
| 2018-19 | MIN | 58 | 7 | 7 | 14 | -7 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 111 | 6.3 | 13:30 |
| 2019-20 | MIN | 62 | 8 | 21 | 29 | +7 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 102 | 7.8 | 15:43 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 56 | 19 | 11 | 30 | +16 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 119 | 16.0 | 17:03 |
| 2021-22 | MIN | 77 | 26 | 23 | 49 | +16 | 28 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 223 | 11.7 | 18:35 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 343 | 69 | 76 | 145 | +35 | 116 | 13 | 0 | 12 | 694 | 9.9 | 15:20 |
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
26 goals and 23 assists in seventy-seven games at 18:35 a night, plus-16. Twentieth overall in 2015, six seasons, 343 games, 145 points — and twenty-six goals is a career high by seven.
The Finesse Game
57.6 per cent of the expected goals is the 94th percentile of forwards and the best mark on this roster. His ice went 44-33 against an expectation of 38.60-28.37, which is the one place the club’s finishing surplus did not fully show up — he beat the model going forward and gave five back.
1.85 even-strength points per 60 is only the 54th percentile, and that gap between an elite chance share and an ordinary scoring rate is the whole shape of him: the ice wins, the puck does not always go in.
57 per cent of his shots came from the slot at a 20-foot median, and twelve of his twenty-six goals came on the power play — against one power-play goal in the five seasons before it. Thirty-five per cent of his points came with the extra man, the 90th percentile.
0.50 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd-fewest of the 393 qualified forwards.
Jared Spurgeon behind him produced 64.3 per cent across 466 attempts, the highest pair figure on the club. With Marcus Foligno across 1,079, 59.5.
The Physical Game
5.79 hits per 60 is the 68th percentile at 6-3 and 207, and 1.13 penalties drawn against 0.59 taken is an 89th-percentile net.
2:09 a night short-handed is the 95th percentile among forwards, and he did it while taking 2:59 on the power play. Very few forwards in the league carry both loads at that volume, and it is the clearest statement a coaching staff can make about a player.
The Intangibles
8.97 miles per 60 is the 6th percentile and 22.1 mph is the 31st. He covers less ground than almost every forward the league measures, which for a two-way centre playing the hardest minutes is genuinely surprising and worth holding onto.
The reading the data supports: a 25-year-old centre who takes the kill, the net-front power-play job, and the best chance share on a 113-point club, and who scores at a fourth-line even-strength rate while doing it. Whether the goals follow the ice is the open question, and last season’s twenty-six is the first evidence that they might.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“2:09 a night short-handed is the 95th percentile among forwards, and he did it while taking 2:59 on the power play.”
“57 per cent of his shots came from the slot at a 20-foot median, and twelve of his twenty-six goals came on the power play — against one power-play goal in the five seasons before it.”
“0.50 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd-fewest of the 393 qualified forwards.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 963 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.6%
- 96th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.2%
- 79th 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: 44 for, 33 against. Expected: 38.6 and 28.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 15 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 — 68 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 · 77 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 50th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.43 a game
- Distance
- 2.78 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.8 mph
- 65th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 963 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
- MIN took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.6% — 3.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 963 minutes at five-on-five — 57th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Foligno | 59.5% | 53.9% | 55.1% |
| Jordan Greenway | 59.2% | 55.9% | 47.7% |
| Jonas Brodin | 60.5% | 55.9% | 54.6% |
59.5% together, 53.9% for him apart and 55.1% for Foligno apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
266 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.