This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Niko Mikkola
Florida Panthers Defense
Six foot six, and the eleventh percentile for registered shot speed.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 170 | 5 | 18 | 23 | -8 | 124 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 152 | 3.3 | 16:41 |
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
1 goal and 5 assists in 81 games — 6 points — split between St. Louis and the Rangers. Plus-6, 17:26 a night, 62 shots, 58 penalty minutes.
45.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 25th percentile, with his ice at 54-55 against an expectation of 45.87-54.79. Eight goals better at the offensive end than the chances deserved and level at the other, which is how a 25th-percentile chance share finishes level.
He was traded to the Rangers at the deadline and Florida signed him in the summer.
Four seasons, 170 games, 23 points.
The Finesse Game
62 shots at a median of 47 feet, 8 per cent from inside twenty and 65 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 39 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 21 shots, 1 goal.
One goal in eighty-one games. There is no offensive case to make here and the club is not asking for one.
84.9 mph at the 11th percentile. The registered figure is a slap-shot measurement and he took thirteen slap shots in ninety-one tracked attempts, so the low reading is partly a reading of what he chooses rather than what he can do. Either way, nothing about his game runs through the shot.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 204 — the tallest defenceman on the Florida roster and thirty pounds lighter than the men he is usually asked to move.
Top speed 22.2 mph, the 45th percentile; bursts 0.9 a game, the 49th; 2.57 miles a game, the 49th. Ordinary in every direction.
Fifty-eight penalty minutes in eighty-one games. He plays a long-armed defensive game, gets a stick into passing lanes at a distance most defencemen cannot reach, and is beaten more often than he should be by forwards who get inside the reach.
The Intangibles
One hundred and twenty-seventh overall in 2015, eight years to a first full NHL season, and a third pair is what he is.
Florida has signed him to play twenty defensive minutes on a club that finished nineteenth in expected goals against. The 25th-percentile chance share in St. Louis and New York is the honest starting point for what that will look like.
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
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He plays a long-armed defensive game, gets a stick into passing lanes at a distance most defencemen cannot reach, and is beaten more often than he should be by forwards who get inside the reach.”
“Fifty-eight penalty minutes in eighty-one games.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,251 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.6%
- 25th pct
- Shot attempts
- 43%
- 9th 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: 54 for, 55 against. Expected: 45.9 and 54.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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, 2022-23 · 81 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 73rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.90 a game
- Distance
- 2.57 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.9 mph
- 17th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 with STL · 727 minutes at five-on-five
- Justin Faulk18%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- NYR took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.6% — 3.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,251 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Fox | 47.1% | 45.2% | 57.2% |
| Vladimir Tarasenko | 41.6% | 46.6% | 47.2% |
| Ivan Barbashev | 53.0% | 44.2% | 45.8% |
47.1% together, 45.2% for him apart and 57.2% for Fox apart. Fox was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
89 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 5 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.