Joel Nystrom

A seventh-round pick, 5-11, and 38 NHL games out of nowhere.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2025-26	CAR	38	1	9	10	+6	6	0	0	0	43	2.3	15:11
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	38	1	9	10	+6	6	0	0	0	43	2.3	15:11

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 9 assists in 38 games, plus-6, at 15:11 a night. His first NHL season, at 23.

The Finesse Game

A mover rather than a creator. 63 unblocked attempts from a median of 58 feet — the longest average distance in this edition alongside Timmins — with 2 per cent inside 20 and 1 goal.

He is not shooting. He is retrieving, turning, and passing, and the 9 assists in 38 games say he is good at the last part.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 178 pounds, which is very small for the position. 6 penalty minutes in 38 games. There is no crease-clearing and there is not going to be; he defends with feet, stick and anticipation.

The Intangibles

56.0 per cent of the expected goals, 92nd percentile, and 59.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 98th, in 531 minutes — and the usual Carolina caveat applies with force here. A rookie third-pair defenceman on the best possession team in the league is going to post numbers that flatter him.

4 points in his last 10. 219th overall in 2021, which is essentially the last row of the draft, and he played 38 NHL games at 23.

Not enough evidence to grade honestly. Ask again in 100 games — but a seventh-round pick this size getting this far is already the interesting part.

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

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
84.1% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
65% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 531 minutes

Expected goals: 56%; 92nd pct
Shot attempts: 59.5%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 17 against. Expected: 26.7 and 20.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

11th

Numbers

92nd

The numbers rank him 81 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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, 2025-26 · 38 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 37th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.37 a game
Distance: 2.20 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 44th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 10 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 531 minutes at five-on-five

Alexander Nikishin42%
Mike Reillyoff the roster21%
K'Andre Miller15%

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, 2025-26

The club: CAR took 55.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.0% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: 531 minutes at five-on-five — 20th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alexander Nikishin	50.6%	60.3%	55.5%
Taylor Hall	55.7%	56.2%	56.6%
Jackson Blake	57.8%	55.1%	57.9%

50.6% together, 60.3% for him apart and 55.5% for Nikishin apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

63 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 84% from beyond forty.