This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nico Sturm
San Jose Sharks Center
The 37th-most buried chair of 652 skaters, undrafted, on the club that won the Stanley Cup.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | MIN | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 12:47 |
| 2019-20 | MIN | 6 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 11:54 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 50 | 11 | 6 | 17 | +10 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 64 | 17.2 | 10:51 |
| 2021-22 | MIN/COL | 74 | 9 | 11 | 20 | -7 | 14 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 101 | 8.9 | 11:54 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 132 | 20 | 19 | 39 | +5 | 31 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 174 | 11.5 | 11:31 |
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
74 games between Minnesota and Colorado, 9 goals and 11 assists at 11:54 a night, minus-7, fourteen penalty minutes, 101 shots. One of the nine came short-handed. Undrafted, and 132 NHL games and thirty-nine points across four seasons out of it.
The Finesse Game
He started 34.2 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 37th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and came out at 49.4 per cent of the expected goals.
A hundred and sixty-eight starts in the attacking end against 323 in his own, and a chance share within a point of even out of it. That is the single best thing in the file.
8.06 shots per 60 is the 62nd percentile at 8.9 per cent, from a 24-foot median with forty-four per cent from the slot — a real volume rate off a twelve-minute shift.
1.60 even-strength points per 60 is the 38th percentile and five per cent of his points came on the power play.
His ice went 27-35 against an expectation of 28.35-29.05. Six more against than the model asked, and he finished the season on the club that won the Stanley Cup.
The Physical Game
5.03 hits per 60 is the 63rd percentile and 1.92 blocks the 59th at 6-3 and 209 pounds.
0.72 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.48 taken, and fourteen penalty minutes in seventy-four games is a clean season for a checking centre.
The Intangibles
22.9 mph is the 82nd percentile and 1.6 bursts a game the 74th, against 1.86 miles a game at the 7th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers.
That last figure is the shift length rather than the skater — at 11:54 a night nobody covers much ground — but the top speed is real and it is the best of any San Jose centre.
He is 27, undrafted, and has 132 NHL games. The chair, the chance share out of it, the shot volume and the skating are four real things. Thirty-nine points in 132 games is the ceiling, and San Jose has just bought the fourth-line centre a club buys when it has decided what it is.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
34% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“Undrafted, and 132 NHL games and thirty-nine points across four seasons out of it.”
“He started 34.2 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end, the 37th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and came out at 49.4 per cent of the expected goals.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 752 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 51st pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.3%
- 48th 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: 27 for, 35 against. Expected: 28.4 and 29.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 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 649 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, 2021-22 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.59 a game
- Distance
- 1.86 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.8 mph
- 85th 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 · 517 minutes at five-on-five
- Connor Dewar23%
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
- COL took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 752 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Duhaime | 47.0% | 51.7% | 49.4% |
| Nick Bjugstad | 47.0% | 50.8% | 53.7% |
| Dmitry Kulikov | 51.1% | 48.8% | 53.9% |
47.0% together, 51.7% for him apart and 49.4% for Duhaime apart. He was better away from Duhaime, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Duhaime.
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
124 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.