This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Joel Eriksson Ek

A 55.2 per cent chance share — the best on the club — in 46 games.

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	MIN	46	14	15	29	+9	22	5	0	1	140	10.0	19:46
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	544	136	163	299	+66	242	42	3	19	1348	10.1	16:58

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

14 goals and 15 assists in 46 games for 29 points, plus-9, on 19:46 a night with 5 on the power play.

54.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 85th percentile — the best figure on the club — with on-ice goals of 21-16 against an expected 23.2-19.7. 46 games is the number: he has now missed significant time in three of the last four seasons.

47 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet.

The Finesse Game

Limited by the standards of a first-line centre and entirely adequate for what he does. 140 shots in 46 games is a high volume and 10 per cent conversion is a fair rate from the locations he takes.

15 assists says the playmaking is not the strength. He creates by winning pucks and getting to the net, and everything about his offence is a byproduct of the physical game.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 207, and among the more punishing centres in the league. He hits, he goes to the net front and stays, and he takes an enormous amount of contact.

22 penalty minutes over 46 games. The body is the whole projection: the way he plays has now cost him parts of three seasons and there is no sign of him adjusting.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, ten seasons in one organisation, and a Selke-calibre defensive centre when he is upright.

At 28 the projection is 60 games and elite two-way play within them. A club that has lost Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek for half a season each has learned what it looks like without both.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
54.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.9, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-3 and 207, and among the more punishing centres in the league. He hits, he goes to the net front and stays, and he takes an enormous amount of contact.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“he goes to the net front and stays”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“15 assists says the playmaking is not the strength.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“a Selke-calibre defensive centre when he is upright”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 581 minutes

Expected goals: 54.1%; 86th pct
Shot attempts: 52.5%; 78th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 16 against. Expected: 23.2 and 19.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

93rd

Numbers

86th

The two rank him within 7 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 82 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, 2024-25 · 46 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 77th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.13 a game
Distance: 2.95 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.6 mph; 56th 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

2024-25 · 581 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, 2024-25

The club: MIN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.1% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 581 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Boldy	58.8%	46.8%	51.5%
Marcus Johansson	49.5%	58.5%	47.0%
Brock Faber	48.5%	58.3%	45.8%

58.8% together, 46.8% for him apart and 51.5% for Boldy 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

183 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.