Rasmus Asplund
Buffalo Sabres Center
Twenty-seven points in 80 games and 0.21 penalties drawn per 60 — the 1st percentile among the league forwards.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | BUF | 29 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 2.8 | 10:50 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 28 | 7 | 4 | 11 | +1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 34 | 20.6 | 12:51 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 80 | 8 | 19 | 27 | -5 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 130 | 6.2 | 14:17 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 137 | 16 | 25 | 41 | -8 | 16 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 200 | 8.0 | 13:16 |
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
8 goals and 19 assists in 80 games — 27 points at 14:17 a night, minus-5, with 2 power-play goals and 1 shorthanded on 130 shots and 10 penalty minutes.
51.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,019 minutes, the 64th percentile — the second-best figure of any Buffalo forward. His ice went 34-41 against an expectation of 37.41-35.49: three goals of scoring missing and five and a half more conceded than the chances predicted.
Twenty-seven points from a third-line shift on a club that finished 24th is a perfectly respectable season and nobody noticed it.
The Finesse Game
130 attempts at a median of 27 feet with 46 per cent from inside the slot, converting at 6.2 per cent — the 9th percentile off an 84.0 mph release at the 12th. Eight goals is what a soft shot from ordinary places produces.
1.32 even-strength points per 60 is the 23rd percentile. He is a passer on a line that does not finish, and 41 points in 137 career games is the ceiling as it stands.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 190. 1.58 hits per 60 is the 13th percentile and 0.74 blocks the 5th. For a forward whose value is supposed to be defensive, neither figure helps.
He drew 0.21 penalties per 60 — the 1st percentile among the league forwards — and took 0.26, the 7th. Ten penalty minutes in 80 games. He is almost entirely absent from the referee’s evening, which is a fair description of how he plays generally.
Top speed 22.7 mph at the 69th percentile. The feet are the best thing here.
The Intangibles
Thirty-third overall in 2016, out of Farjestad, and 137 NHL games.
He is 24. He kills penalties, takes a defensive draw and gives almost nothing away doing either, and on a club with three centres younger and better than him that is a fourth-line job description. The 51.3 is the argument for keeping him and the eight goals are the argument against.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
29.0% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.13 penalty minutes a game over 80, 4th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
51.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 44.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.4, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“He kills penalties, takes a defensive draw and gives almost nothing away doing either”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,019 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.3%
- 65th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.6%
- 81st 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: 34 for, 41 against. Expected: 37.4 and 35.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 48 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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, 2021-22 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 79th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.36 a game
- Distance
- 2.29 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.0 mph
- 34th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 1019 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, 2021-22
- The club
- BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.3% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 1,019 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victor Olofsson | 53.5% | 49.7% | 41.3% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 51.3% | 51.3% | 45.0% |
| Jacob Bryson | 53.7% | 50.2% | 46.5% |
53.5% together, 49.7% for him apart and 41.3% for Olofsson 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
169 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.