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

Nikolaj Ehlers

63 points in 69 games, and the first significant free agent this organisation has ever signed.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2015-16	WPG	72	15	23	38	+3	21	4	0	0	167	9.0	16:06
2016-17	WPG	82	25	39	64	+1	38	5	0	4	204	12.3	17:29
2017-18	WPG	82	29	31	60	+14	26	7	0	7	231	12.6	16:05
2018-19	WPG	62	21	16	37	+2	15	2	0	4	158	13.3	15:46
2019-20	WPG	71	25	33	58	+14	30	3	1	5	203	12.3	16:31
2020-21	WPG	47	21	25	46	+15	15	6	0	5	148	14.2	16:55
2021-22	WPG	62	28	27	55	+18	20	4	0	2	245	11.4	18:04
2022-23	WPG	45	12	26	38	-2	11	3	0	0	132	9.1	15:39
2023-24	WPG	82	25	36	61	+27	29	0	0	7	233	10.7	15:52
2024-25	WPG	69	24	39	63	+14	17	6	0	5	174	13.8	15:48
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	674	225	295	520	+106	222	40	1	39	1895	11.9	16:26

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

24 goals and 39 assists in 69 games for 63 points, plus-14, on 15:48 a night with Winnipeg and 174 shots.

63 points in under 16 minutes a night is a rate almost nobody in the league matches — he has now produced at a point-per-game clip in three of the last four seasons while never once being given a first-line workload.

The Finesse Game

The fastest man on this roster and one of the fastest in the league. He accelerates through the neutral zone with the puck under control, which forces a defenceman to turn, and everything he does offensively comes out of that half-second.

13.8 per cent shooting is a fair rate and the release is quick off the rush. The playmaking has grown — 39 assists in 69 games — and he is now as likely to slow up and find the trailer as to shoot. What he does not do is create anything from a standing start; if the puck has to be won first, he is not the man who wins it.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 168, and he is one of the lightest forwards in the league. He does not forecheck with weight, does not win pucks on the wall, and is separated from possession by any NHL defenceman who gets a body on him.

17 penalty minutes over 69 games. He is not in the traffic. The durability has been mixed — he has cleared 75 games twice in ten seasons.

The Intangibles

Ten seasons in Winnipeg spent being underused by three different coaches, and a free-agent departure that surprised nobody.

Carolina is the ideal environment for him: a club that already wins the puck and needs somebody to do something with it. The reservation is April. He has 20 points in 55 career playoff games, on clubs that were repeatedly eliminated by heavier opposition, and this organisation’s specific failure has been the same one.

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
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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 64 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 6.3%, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He accelerates through the neutral zone with the puck under control, which forces a defenceman to turn”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The playmaking has grown — 39 assists in 69 games — and he is now as likely to slow up and find the trailer as to shoot.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck with weight”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not win pucks on the wall”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“is separated from possession by any NHL defenceman who gets a body on him”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 850 minutes

Expected goals: 55.3%; 91st pct
Shot attempts: 52.6%; 79th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 38 for, 22 against. Expected: 37.1 and 30.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

91st

The two rank him within 19 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 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 · 69 games

Top speed: 23.3 mph; 94th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.22 a game
Distance: 2.57 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.9 mph; 94th 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 with WPG · 850 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: WPG took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.3% — 3.5 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 850 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cole Perfetti	54.2%	58.3%	51.4%
Vladislav Namestnikov	53.8%	59.4%	52.8%
Josh Morrissey	58.2%	53.6%	52.9%

54.2% together, 58.3% for him apart and 51.4% for Perfetti apart. He was better away from Perfetti, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Perfetti.

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

266 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 29% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.