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

Joel Eriksson Ek

Three hundred and forty-seven attempts at a median of fifteen feet, which is where a 6-3 centre should be shooting from.

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	MIN	78	23	38	61	+4	44	12	2	1	247	9.3	19:00
2023-24	MIN	77	30	34	64	+18	60	12	1	5	267	11.2	20:32
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	498	122	148	270	+57	220	37	3	18	1208	10.1	16:43

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

77 games, 30 goals and 34 assists for 64 points, 12 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 60 penalty minutes, 20:32 a night and plus-18. He took 54.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,021 minutes, the 86th percentile, and his ice went 57-42 against an expectation of 45.18-37.30.

Twelve goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and five more conceded than they called for. Thirty goals on the hardest matchup assignment this club gives out.

The Finesse Game

347 attempts at a median of 15 feet with 55 per cent of them from inside 20, converted at 11.2 per cent against a career 10.1.

Of the ten men in this edition who shot from closer than he did, only Zach Hyman and Chris Kreider took more attempts. 148 career assists in 498 games. There is no distance shot and there does not need to be one; he arrives in the blue paint and stays there until the puck does.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 207 and cannot be moved out of the front of a net.

60 penalty minutes in 77 games at twenty and a half a night is an ordinary rate for a centre who forechecks this hard. He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and wins the wall against anybody.

The Intangibles

Twentieth overall in 2015 out of Karlstad, eight seasons, and 270 points in 498 games, all of it for one organisation.

He is 27 and has gone 26, 23 and 30 goals in the last three seasons while taking the defensive assignment. That combination is rarer than the point totals suggest.

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.

net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“There is no distance shot and there does not need to be one; he arrives in the blue paint and stays there until the puck does.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-3 and 207 and cannot be moved out of the front of a net.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“60 penalty minutes in 77 games at twenty and a half a night is an ordinary rate for a centre who forechecks this hard.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and wins the wall against anybody.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and wins the wall against anybody.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and wins the wall against anybody.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,021 minutes

Expected goals: 54.8%; 86th pct
Shot attempts: 52.2%; 73rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 57 for, 42 against. Expected: 45.2 and 37.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

87th

Numbers

86th

The two rank him within 1 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 — 78 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 · 77 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 38th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.17 a game
Distance: 2.89 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.3 mph; 85th 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 · 1021 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: MIN took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.8% — 3.5 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,021 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Boldy	56.6%	50.4%	56.2%
Brock Faber	52.9%	56.6%	49.2%
Kirill Kaprizov	61.3%	48.6%	52.1%

56.6% together, 50.4% for him apart and 56.2% for Boldy apart. He was worse away from Boldy, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Boldy did.

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

347 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.