This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →

Nick Bonino

The 4th-lowest attempt share of 393 forwards and the 2nd-most blocks, out of the lowest offensive-zone time in the league.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2009-10	ANA	9	1	1	2	0	6	1	0	0	14	7.1	14:13
2010-11	ANA	26	0	0	0	-3	4	0	0	0	23	0.0	9:48
2011-12	ANA	50	5	13	18	+1	8	0	0	0	63	7.9	12:29
2012-13	ANA	27	5	8	13	-3	8	1	0	0	37	13.5	15:53
2013-14	ANA	77	22	27	49	+14	22	7	0	2	159	13.8	16:14
2014-15	VAN	75	15	24	39	+7	22	1	0	6	149	10.1	16:55
2015-16	PIT	63	9	20	29	+13	31	2	1	0	97	9.3	15:50
2016-17	PIT	80	18	19	37	-5	16	6	1	1	142	12.7	16:39
2017-18	NSH	71	12	13	25	+4	20	0	0	0	83	14.5	15:38
2018-19	NSH	81	17	18	35	+27	18	3	0	1	118	14.4	16:18
2019-20	NSH	67	18	17	35	+17	16	1	0	3	104	17.3	16:31
2020-21	MIN	55	10	16	26	0	26	3	0	2	66	15.2	14:51
2021-22	SJS	80	16	10	26	-25	18	3	1	0	137	11.7	16:42
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	761	148	186	334	+47	215	28	3	15	1192	12.4	15:44

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

80 games, 16 goals and 10 assists at 16:42 a night, minus-25, eighteen penalty minutes, 137 shots. One hundred and seventy-third overall in 2007 by San Jose — the sixth round — thirteen seasons, 761 games, 334 points, a career plus-47.

The Finesse Game

Thirty-six point five per cent of his even-strength ice was spent in the offensive zone — the lowest figure of all 365 forwards the tracking covers.

And he started 35.4 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 45th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. Two separate measurements of the assignment and both are near the floor.

40.4 per cent of the attempts is the 4th-lowest of the 393 and 44.2 per cent of the expected goals the 12th percentile. The four-point gap between them, in that direction, is the whole point of him — he concedes the puck and does not concede the chance.

1.02 even-strength points per 60 is the 8th percentile and twenty-seven per cent of his points came on the power play, off 1:51 a night — an odd role for a man deployed this way.

0.67 giveaways per 60 is the 3rd percentile, one of the lowest rates in the league, against 2.25 takeaways at the 86th.

Sixteen goals is the fourth-best total of his thirteen seasons, and it came from a 23-foot median with fifty-three per cent from the slot.

The Physical Game

4.58 blocks per 60 is the 2nd-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games, at 6-1 and 198 pounds.

1.53 hits per 60 is the 12th percentile. He gets in the way and does not finish checks, which is the specific method the deployment requires.

0.27 penalties drawn per 60 is the 3rd percentile against 0.40 taken, eighteen penalty minutes in eighty games.

The Intangibles

1:37 short-handed a night is the 77th percentile among forwards, and one of his sixteen goals came a man short.

21.4 mph is the 5th percentile, 0.9 bursts per 60 the 2nd, 8.97 miles per 60 the 7th. Three skating measurements in the bottom eighth of the league, and at 34 that is what the hardest assignment in hockey is being handled without.

He is 34 with 761 games and thirteen seasons. The blocks, the takeaways, the giveaway rate, the chair and the kill are five real things done at a skating level near the floor of the position. The minus-25 belongs to where he starts, and the 40.4 per cent attempt share is the price of 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.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
35% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“4.58 blocks per 60 is the 2nd-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games, at 6-1 and 198 pounds.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“1:37 short-handed a night is the 77th percentile among forwards, and one of his sixteen goals came a man short.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“Thirty-six point five per cent of his even-strength ice was spent in the offensive zone — the lowest figure of all 365 forwards the tracking covers.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,052 minutes

Expected goals: 44.2%; 15th pct
Shot attempts: 40.4%; 2nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 50 against. Expected: 31.3 and 39.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

48th

Numbers

15th

The report ranks him 33 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 60 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 23rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.24 a game
Distance: 2.50 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.0 mph; 45th 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

2021-22 · 1052 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, 2021-22

The club: SJS took 47.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.2% — 3.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,052 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Nieto	46.5%	41.6%	49.1%
Andrew Cogliano	41.6%	45.7%	44.6%
Brent Burns	42.7%	45.0%	47.8%

46.5% together, 41.6% for him apart and 49.1% for Nieto apart. He was worse away from Nieto, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Nieto 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

172 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.