Nikolaj Ehlers

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

62 games, 28 goals and 27 assists at 18:04 a night, plus-18 — the best figure on the club — twenty penalty minutes, 245 shots, four power-play goals and two game-winners. Ninth overall in 2014 by Winnipeg, seven seasons, 478 games, 358 points.

The Finesse Game

13.12 shots per 60 is the 5th-most of the 393 forwards who played forty games. Only Pastrnak, Matthews, Meier and Bergeron were above it.

And thirty-five per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet, the 16th-lowest slot share of the same 393, at a 31-foot median that is the 28th-longest. He shoots more often than almost anybody in the league, from further out than almost anybody, and scores twenty-eight.

2.81 even-strength points per 60 is the 90th percentile and only sixteen per cent of his points came on the power play, off 2:14 a night. Almost all of this production is five-on-five.

52.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 70th percentile and 54.2 per cent of the attempts the 82nd, out of 60.2 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 51st-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — the softest chair on the club, and it should be.

His ice went 55-34 against an expectation of 47.54-43.05. Seven and a half better than the model in front and nine fewer against. He is the only forward on this roster whose minutes beat their expectation in both directions, on a club that finished 30th in the league in finishing.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 168 pounds — the 4th-lightest man in this edition, and the only one of the four who stands six feet.

1.71 hits per 60 is the 16th percentile and 1.45 blocks the 38th, and twenty penalty minutes came out of sixty-two games.

1.29 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.54 taken is a net of plus 0.75, the 96th percentile among forwards. He is fouled a great deal and he does not foul anybody.

The Intangibles

23.5 mph is the 18th-fastest of the 365 tracked forwards and 10.34 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 40th-most, at 6-0 and 168 pounds.

9.66 miles per 60 is the 51st percentile, so the speed is in the sprints rather than the volume.

He is 26, ninth overall in 2014, born in Aalborg, with 164 goals in 478 games and a career plus-67. Twenty games lost is the only bad number in the file and it is the fourth season out of seven he has missed at least ten. The shot volume, the speed, the penalty differential and the two-way ledger are as good as anything in this chapter. Eighteen minutes a night for a man producing at the 90th percentile of even-strength scoring is the club’s decision to explain, not his.