This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Bjugstad
Arizona Coyotes Center
Six-foot-six, ten minutes a night, and the best chance share on the roster — which on this roster is the 56th percentile.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-13 | FLA | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 5.9 | 15:13 |
| 2013-14 | FLA | 76 | 16 | 22 | 38 | -14 | 16 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 185 | 8.6 | 16:13 |
| 2014-15 | FLA | 72 | 24 | 19 | 43 | -7 | 38 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 207 | 11.6 | 16:35 |
| 2015-16 | FLA | 67 | 15 | 19 | 34 | -8 | 41 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 171 | 8.8 | 15:31 |
| 2016-17 | FLA | 54 | 7 | 7 | 14 | -19 | 22 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 91 | 7.7 | 13:09 |
| 2017-18 | FLA | 82 | 19 | 30 | 49 | +5 | 41 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 230 | 8.3 | 15:07 |
| 2018-19 | FLA/PIT | 64 | 14 | 12 | 26 | +6 | 30 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 154 | 9.1 | 15:08 |
| 2019-20 | PIT | 13 | 1 | 1 | 2 | +3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 5.6 | 12:14 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 44 | 6 | 11 | 17 | +7 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 78 | 7.7 | 11:49 |
| 2021-22 | MIN | 57 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -2 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 8.6 | 10:16 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 540 | 110 | 127 | 237 | -37 | 235 | 18 | 1 | 17 | 1232 | 8.9 | 14:28 |
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
With Minnesota. 7 goals and 6 assists in 57 games — 13 points at 10:16 a night, minus-2, with 1 power-play goal on 81 shots and 20 penalty minutes.
10:16 a night is the 2nd percentile of ice time among the league’s forwards. He was Minnesota’s thirteenth forward on a club that won 53 games, and that context is the whole of the next paragraph.
50.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 576 minutes, the 56th percentile — the highest figure of anybody Arizona will dress. His ice went 19-23 against an expectation of 22.05-21.69. Sheltered minutes on a very good team is a real caveat and it does not make the number false.
The Finesse Game
81 attempts at a median of 20 feet, 57 per cent of them from inside the slot, at 96.6 mph — the 92nd percentile of shot velocity. He shoots hard from close range and converted at 8.6 per cent, the 26th percentile, which is unlucky rather than characteristic: 110 goals in 540 career games.
8.31 shots per 60 at the 66th percentile from a fourth-line role is a genuine argument for giving him more than ten minutes, which is presumably why he is here.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 210, and 10.16 hits per 60 is the 89th percentile among forwards. A man that tall who finishes checks changes what a defenceman does on a retrieval.
9.7 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 86th percentile at a top speed of 22.2 — the 34th. That is the profile of a big man who accelerates well over short distances and does not have another gear, which is exactly what a forechecking role wants.
1.44 blocks per 60 at the 37th percentile and minus-0.31 on penalties drawn against taken. The defensive half is thin.
The Intangibles
Nineteenth overall in 2010 by Florida, 540 games, 237 points, and a 24-goal season at twenty-two in Florida that nobody has seen the like of since.
He is 30, signed for a year, and Arizona is the fourth organisation to try him after Florida, Pittsburgh and Minnesota. On a club that scored 207 goals, a 6-6 forward who shoots hard from the slot and hits at the 89th percentile is worth twice the ice time Minnesota gave him — and that, rather than any projection, is why this is a sensible signing.
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.
“10.16 hits per 60 is the 89th percentile among forwards”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 576 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.4%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.4%
- 39th 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: 19 for, 23 against. Expected: 22.1 and 21.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 30 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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 · 57 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 52nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.67 a game
- Distance
- 1.64 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.6 mph
- 95th 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 with MIN · 576 minutes at five-on-five
- Connor Dewar17%
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 50.4% — 3.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 576 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Duhaime | 49.3% | 51.5% | 47.2% |
| Nico Sturm | 47.0% | 53.7% | 50.8% |
| Dmitry Kulikov | 53.7% | 48.4% | 53.3% |
49.3% together, 51.5% for him apart and 47.2% for Duhaime 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
107 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.