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

Nick Bjugstad

Six-foot-six, 760 games, and 19 points in Utah before St. Louis signed him for the fourth line.

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	ARI/EDM	78	17	12	29	+13	34	1	1	1	145	11.7	16:12
2023-24	ARI	76	22	23	45	+11	59	2	1	2	165	13.3	17:27
2024-25	UTA	66	8	11	19	-2	16	1	0	0	115	7.0	12:19
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	760	157	173	330	-15	344	22	3	20	1657	9.5	14:46

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

8 goals and 11 assists in 66 games for Utah — 19 points at 12:19 a night, minus-2, with 16 penalty minutes on 115 shots.

A 7.0 per cent conversion, which is the lowest of his career in a full season. He scored 22 goals in Arizona two years earlier and the decline since has been steep.

The Finesse Game

115 attempts and 8 goals. The shot is real and the release from a man this size is slower than it needs to be, and at 33 that has stopped being survivable.

11 assists in 66 games. There is no creation; he is a net-front body who converts what deflects off him.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 210 and he has never played as heavy as the frame suggests. He goes to the front of the net and he is difficult to move once set, and he does not initiate much.

16 penalty minutes in 66 games is a low rate. He is not an agitator and he does not take liberties; the size is used for position rather than for contact.

The Intangibles

Nineteenth overall in 2010 and 760 games and 330 points across six organisations in thirteen seasons.

He is 33 and St. Louis signed him in the summer. On a club whose fourth line was the most productive part of the roster last season, the job is to be the largest man on it.

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
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.

net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He goes to the front of the net and he is difficult to move once set, and he does not initiate much.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He goes to the front of the net and he is difficult to move once set, and he does not initiate much.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He is not an agitator and he does not take liberties; the size is used for position rather than for contact.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“There is no creation; he is a net-front body who converts what deflects off him.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 724 minutes

Expected goals: 51.5%; 67th pct
Shot attempts: 50.9%; 63rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 23 for, 29 against. Expected: 30.5 and 28.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

67th

The numbers rank him 50 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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 · 66 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 48th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.36 a game
Distance: 2.03 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.9 mph; 97th 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 with UTA · 724 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: UTA took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 724 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Lawson Crouse	52.6%	50.4%	55.0%
Michael Kesselring	54.7%	49.7%	54.0%
Ian Cole	54.4%	49.8%	52.7%

52.6% together, 50.4% for him apart and 55.0% for Crouse 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

158 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 29% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.