Photo by Voltmetro, CC BY-SA 3.0
Niko Mikkola
Florida Panthers Defense #77
6-6, chances dead level, and the goals went 33 to 58 against.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | STL | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0 | 14:22 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -11 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 4.5 | 14:31 |
| 2021-22 | STL | 54 | 3 | 10 | 13 | -6 | 55 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 58 | 5.2 | 16:59 |
| 2022-23 | STL/NYR | 81 | 1 | 5 | 6 | +6 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 1.6 | 17:26 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 82 | 3 | 14 | 17 | +11 | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 93 | 3.2 | 20:02 |
| 2024-25 | FLA | 76 | 6 | 16 | 22 | +12 | 70 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 116 | 5.2 | 20:12 |
| 2025-26 | FLA | 68 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -1 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 68 | 4.4 | 20:21 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 396 | 17 | 56 | 73 | +14 | 310 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 429 | 4.0 | 18:41 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
3 goals and 8 assists in 68 games — 11 points, minus-1, at 20:21 a night with 47 penalty minutes.
The Finesse Game
There is none and there is no pretence of any. 123 unblocked attempts from a median of 46 feet, 3 goals. 17 goals in 396 career games.
8 assists in 68 games of 20-minute nights is close to the lowest offensive return in this edition. He makes the first pass short and gets off the ice.
The Physical Game
6-6, 204, and the reach ends plays before they begin. 47 penalty minutes. He clears the crease, he closes hard, and he is one of the few defencemen in the league who can simply take a puck off a forward with an arm.
The Intangibles
The single most extreme case of the Florida season, and it deserves to be read carefully. The expected goals while he was on the ice were dead level — 48.8 for and 48.0 against across 1,197 minutes, at a 50.4 per cent share.
The actual goals went 38 for and 47 against.
That is a 25 goal gap on an even split of the chances, and there is no version of it that is about him. Florida’s goaltending came in 40 goals worse than the chances it faced, the worst in the league, and a heavy defensive defenceman taking hard minutes is where that lands hardest.
He is 30, a 127th overall pick with a Stanley Cup. The minus-1 on his record is the only number on this page that is not lying in one direction or the other.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,197 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.8%
- 62nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.7%
- 72nd 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: 38 for, 47 against. Expected: 48.3 and 46.9.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 35 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2025-26 · 68 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 65th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.99 a game
- Distance
- 3.19 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.8 mph
- 27th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
3
points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 1 assists, 15 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1197 minutes at five-on-five
- Seth Jones49%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- FLA took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.8% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,197 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seth Jones | 53.7% | 47.9% | 48.4% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 51.3% | 50.4% | 52.0% |
| Sam Bennett | 51.8% | 50.2% | 50.2% |
53.7% together, 47.9% for him apart and 48.4% for Jones apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
123 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 51 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.