This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nico Sturm
Minnesota Wild Center
14 points, and a faceoff centre coming back to the club that developed him.
| 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 | SJS | 74 | 14 | 12 | 26 | -13 | 23 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 119 | 11.8 | 14:44 |
| 2023-24 | SJS | 63 | 5 | 8 | 13 | -25 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 69 | 7.2 | 14:40 |
| 2024-25 | SJS/FLA | 62 | 7 | 7 | 14 | -6 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 59 | 11.9 | 10:25 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 331 | 46 | 46 | 92 | -39 | 86 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 421 | 10.9 | 12:38 |
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
7 goals and 7 assists in 62 games for 14 points, minus-6, on 10:25 a night between San Jose and Florida, including a shorthanded goal.
59 shots in 62 games and 7 goals at 11.9 per cent. A fourth-line season split between the worst club in the league and the champions.
The Finesse Game
Almost none. 14 points is close to his rate across six seasons and there has never been a scoring year above 22 points.
The value is entirely in the faceoff circle, where he is genuinely among the better centres in the league, and in not losing possession.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 209, and he plays an honest, heavy checking game. He wins pucks below the goal line, blocks shots, and forechecks with weight.
20 penalty minutes over 62 games is disciplined for the style.
The Intangibles
Undrafted out of Clarkson, five organisations, a Cup in Colorado and another in Florida, and a return to the club he started with.
At 30 the projection is a fourth-line centre who wins draws and kills penalties. On a club with a 22nd-ranked kill and no depth at centre behind two injury-prone men, that 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.
“The value is entirely in the faceoff circle, where he is genuinely among the better centres in the league”
“forechecks with weight”
“blocks shots”
“He wins pucks below the goal line”
“At 30 the projection is a fourth-line centre who wins draws and kills penalties.”
“Undrafted out of Clarkson, five organisations, a Cup in Colorado and another in Florida, and a return to the club he started with.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 534 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.2%
- 21st pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.9%
- 24th 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: 17 for, 21 against. Expected: 19.5 and 22.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 28 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.37 a game
- Distance
- 1.69 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.4 mph
- 63rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 SJS · 429 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
- FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.2% — 7.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 534 minutes at five-on-five — 19th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ty Dellandrea | 43.9% | 47.5% | 36.0% |
| Mario Ferraro | 45.4% | 46.6% | 46.7% |
| Carl Grundstrom | 47.0% | 45.9% | 49.0% |
43.9% together, 47.5% for him apart and 36.0% for Dellandrea apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Dellandrea behind.
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
86 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.