This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Paul Cotter
New Jersey Devils Left Wing
Twenty-five points in 76 games in Vegas, and a fourth-round pick who has made himself a job.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | VGK | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 18.2 | 8:49 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 55 | 13 | 5 | 18 | -5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 17.1 | 12:50 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 76 | 7 | 18 | 25 | -11 | 41 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 100 | 7.0 | 12:44 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 138 | 22 | 23 | 45 | -15 | 62 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 187 | 11.8 | 12:34 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
76 games in Vegas, 7 goals and 18 assists for 25 points, 2 on the power play, 41 penalty minutes, 12:44 a night and minus-11. He took 51.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 927 minutes, the 64th percentile, and his ice went 31-40 against an expectation of 37.13-35.01, all of it with the Golden Knights.
Six goals of scoring that did not arrive and five more conceded than the chances called for. A 64th-percentile chance share that produced a minus-11 is the goaltending, and Vegas finished 17th at it.
The Finesse Game
100 shots at a median of 22 feet with 40 per cent from inside 20, converted at 7.0 per cent against a career 11.76.
23 career assists in 138 games. Seven goals on a hundred shots is well below his own rate and eighteen assists from a fourth line is well above it. He gets to the net and the finishing has not come with him.
The Physical Game
He hits everything at 6-2 and 213 and finishes checks that are already over.
62 career penalty minutes in 138 games is a moderate rate. He forechecks aggressively, wins the wall, and will fight when it is asked of him.
The Intangibles
A fourth-round pick in 2018 out of Canton, Michigan, three seasons across two organisations, and 45 points in 138 games.
He is 24 and was part of the price of a Vegas roster that had to shed salary. Twenty-five points from a twelve-minute fourth-liner at 24 is a real bottom-six player and this club needed several.
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
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.
“He hits everything at 6-2 and 213 and finishes checks that are already over.”
“He forechecks aggressively, wins the wall, and will fight when it is asked of him.”
“He forechecks aggressively, wins the wall, and will fight when it is asked of him.”
“He forechecks aggressively, wins the wall, and will fight when it is asked of him.”
“He gets to the net and the finishing has not come with him.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 927 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.5%
- 64th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.8%
- 26th 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: 31 for, 40 against. Expected: 37.1 and 35.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 21 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2023-24 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 87th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.01 a game
- Distance
- 2.09 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.7 mph
- 80th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 with VGK · 927 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, 2023-24
- The club
- VGK took 51.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 927 minutes at five-on-five — 50th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| William Karlsson | 60.3% | 45.9% | 56.8% |
| Michael Amadio | 55.7% | 49.5% | 51.9% |
| Brayden McNabb | 56.7% | 49.2% | 51.2% |
60.3% together, 45.9% for him apart and 56.8% for Karlsson apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
151 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.