Nico Sturm

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

14 goals and 12 assists in 74 games — 26 points — at 14:44 a night. Minus-13, 119 shots at 11.8 per cent, one shorthanded, one game-winner, 23 penalty minutes.

Fourteen goals is a career high by three.

46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 882 minutes, the 25th percentile, with his ice at 37-45 against an expectation of 33.32-37.67 — four goals better than the chances at the good end and seven worse at the other.

He started 36.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 9th percentile: 209 attacking draws against 357 defensive ones. That is the hardest deployment given to any San Jose forward, and on this club it is a job rather than a punishment.

The Finesse Game

119 shots at a median of 23 feet.

Inside twenty feet: 46 shots on goal and nine goals — 19.57 per cent, above the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 36 shots and three goals, 8.33 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 30 shots and two goals, 6.67, above the 4.16 rate for a forward.

Above the rate from close and from range, below it in the middle, on a hundred and twelve shots on goal. An 11.8 per cent shooting percentage against a career 11.6 says the goal total is real rather than hot.

164 tracked attempts, 25 of them tip-ins and 25 backhands — a 15.2 per cent backhand share, the eleventh-highest of the 319 skaters in this book who took a hundred and fifty attempts. Five slap shots.

That combination — tips, backhands, and almost nothing from a set position — is the shot chart of a centre who plays below the goal line and finishes what he retrieves. Seven wrap-arounds is the second-highest count on the club.

87.1 mph at the 23rd percentile. The shot is soft and it has never been the point.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 209 pounds, with 2.5 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 92nd percentile on 2.34 miles a game at the 34th, at a top speed of 22.8 mph at the 79th.

He sprints more often than nine skaters in ten and covers less ground than two thirds of them, which is what fifteen minutes of hard defensive-zone shifts looks like in the tracking data. The burst count is the honest part: it is not scaled by ice time in the way the mileage is.

He forechecks first man at speed and finishes the check, and at 6-3 he is one of the few forwards on this roster who arrives with weight.

He takes the defensive-zone draws, which is the reason for the deployment above and the reason a fourth-line centre plays nearly fifteen minutes.

23 penalty minutes in 74 games and 54 in 206 career games — a very low rate for a checking centre.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of five seasons and 206 games across Minnesota, Colorado and San Jose.

34 goals and 65 points, and a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022. A German-born forward who was not drafted, arrived at twenty-four, and has made a career out of the shift nobody else wants.

He is twenty-eight. The 14 goals last season are the most he will score and the deployment is what he is for: the 9th percentile of zone starts, the draw, and the first man in on the forecheck.

On a club rebuilding from the bottom, this is the kind of file that gets traded in February and is worth more to the buyer than to the seller.