This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Niko Mikkola

6-6, 70 penalty minutes, and on-ice goals of 50-51 in a shutdown role.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	328	14	48	62	+15	263	0	1	0	361	3.9	18:20

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

6 goals and 16 assists in 76 games for 22 points, plus-12, on 20:12 a night with 70 penalty minutes.

53.3 per cent at five-on-five, the 80th percentile, over 1,297 minutes. His on-ice goals were 50-51 against an expected 53.1-46.5, which is eight goals of goaltending and finishing against him — one of the few Florida players the season did not treat well.

The Finesse Game

Modest. 116 shots and 6 goals with two-thirds from beyond 40 feet, and a first pass that is safe rather than quick.

16 assists at 20 minutes a night is a low return and it is not the job. He gets the puck to a forward and stops.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 204, and this is the case for him. He clears his crease by force, closes a rush with enormous reach, and is genuinely unpleasant to play against below the goal line.

70 penalty minutes over 76 games is a high total and part of the style. He is one of two men here who can defend the paint physically.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick, four organisations, a Cup, and a career built entirely on being large and willing.

At 29 the projection is unchanged: a genuinely good second-pair shutdown defenceman on a reasonable contract. With Barkov out, the defensive load on this pairing grows.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“16 assists at 20 minutes a night is a low return and it is not the job. He gets the puck to a forward and stops.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He clears his crease by force, closes a rush with enormous reach, and is genuinely unpleasant to play against below the goal line.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“closes a rush with enormous reach”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“is genuinely unpleasant to play against below the goal line”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“70 penalty minutes over 76 games is a high total and part of the style.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,297 minutes

Expected goals: 53.3%; 80th pct
Shot attempts: 54.6%; 90th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 51 against. Expected: 53.1 and 46.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

80th

The numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. 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 — 74 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 · 76 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 90th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.26 a game
Distance: 3.14 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.7 mph; 27th pct

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 · 1297 minutes at five-on-five

Dmitry Kulikov53%
Nate Schmidtnow UTA21%

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 53.3% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,297 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dmitry Kulikov	51.5%	55.3%	51.6%
Sam Bennett	53.8%	53.0%	51.2%
Carter Verhaeghe	49.9%	54.8%	56.3%

51.5% together, 55.3% for him apart and 51.6% for Kulikov apart. He was better away from Kulikov, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Kulikov.

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

172 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.