Nils Aman

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

4 goals and 12 assists in 68 games — 16 points — at 12:42 a night, in his first NHL season. Minus-12, 50 shots at 8.0 per cent, 18 penalty minutes.

Sixty-eight games from a sixth-round pick who had never played in North America is the fact worth starting with.

43 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 7th percentile, across 773 minutes, with his ice at 20-32 against an expectation of 23.68-31.40. A 41 per cent share of the attempts.

He started 35.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 7th percentile: 125 attacking draws against 229 defensive ones.

A rookie fourth-line centre taking the seventh percentile of starts on a club that finished twenty-fourth in chance share is going to have a 7th-percentile chance share, and the reader should discount almost all of it.

The Finesse Game

50 shots at a median of 18 feet, with 55 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 8 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 29 shots on goal and four goals — 13.79 per cent, below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 12 shots and none. Beyond forty: four shots and none. Forty-five shots on goal is not a sample.

71 tracked attempts in 68 games, 35 of them wrist shots, 15 tip-ins — a 21.1 per cent share — and two slap shots.

His shot is measured at 77.0 mph, the 0th percentile — the third-softest of any skater in this book. Only Chris Tierney and Isac Lundeström are softer.

That number is the file’s ceiling and it is worth being blunt about. A maximum shot speed does not need a large sample to be honest, and 77 mph means he will not beat an NHL goaltender with a shot from anywhere. Everything he does offensively has to come from the tip-in share and from being in front.

He goes to the net and gets a stick on things, which is the whole of the offensive record.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 179 pounds, which is very light, with 18 penalty minutes in 68 games.

Top speed 22.1 mph at the 38th percentile, 2.2 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 89th percentile, and 2.14 miles a game at the 22nd.

That middle figure is the good news. He is not fast at the top end and he gets there often, which on a fourth line taking defensive-zone starts is worth more than a higher maximum.

He forechecks hard and closes ground quickly, and the burst count is the measurement of it.

He is not physical and at 179 pounds is beaten off pucks by anybody who wants them, which is the other half of a 7th-percentile chance share.

The Intangibles

A hundred and sixty-seventh overall in 2020, the sixth round, one season, 68 games, 16 points.

Four goals and twelve assists, and a minus-12.

He is twenty-three, a Swedish sixth-round pick drafted by Colorado and signed here, and he played sixty-eight NHL games in his first season on the continent.

Getting to the league at all from the sixth round is the achievement, and the 77 mph shot is the reason the ceiling is a fourth line. What he has is willingness, a burst count in the top tenth, and a stick that gets in the way of things.