This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Ross Colton

He scored the goal that won a Stanley Cup, and he plays twelve minutes a night.

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

2020-21	TBL	30	9	3	12	+3	16	0	0	4	46	19.6	10:34
2021-22	TBL	79	22	17	39	+4	24	1	0	4	159	13.8	12:48
2022-23	TBL	81	16	16	32	-8	50	4	0	3	153	10.5	12:21
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	190	47	36	83	-1	90	5	0	11	358	13.1	12:15

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

16 goals and 16 assists in 81 games for Tampa Bay, minus-8, 12:21 a night, 50 penalty minutes.

50.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 58th percentile, with his ice at 32-38 against an expectation of 37.57-36.32 — five short at one end and two long at the other, which is a modest bad-luck season rather than a bad one.

Three seasons, 190 games, 47 goals. The rate has been steady: 9, 22 and 16 in 30, 79 and 81 games.

The Finesse Game

153 shots at a median of 24 feet, 44 per cent from inside twenty.

Inside forty: 127 shots, sixteen goals, 12.60 per cent. Beyond forty: 21 shots, none.

He shoots from the slot, converts at a fair rate and does nothing from distance. That is a third-line centre’s shooting profile and it is exactly what the ice time says he is.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 194. 2.02 miles a game at the 17th percentile — low, and consistent with twelve-minute nights — on a 22.3 mph top speed at the 49th.

50 penalty minutes in 81 games is a high rate for the ice time. He plays a heavy game in a small number of minutes, and Colorado are paying for the heaviness.

The Intangibles

118th overall in 2016, out of Vermont, and a Stanley Cup in his rookie season. He scored the goal that won the 2021 Final.

Colorado signed him to be the third centre a contender needs and could not find. The playoff record is short and it is unusually good, and this book will not pretend it can price that.

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

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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He plays a heavy game in a small number of minutes, and Colorado are paying for the heaviness.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 914 minutes

Expected goals: 50.8%; 58th pct
Shot attempts: 52.9%; 79th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 38 against. Expected: 37.6 and 36.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

29th

Numbers

58th

The numbers rank him 29 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2022-23 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.3 mph; 56th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.35 a game
Distance: 2.02 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.5 mph; 69th 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

2022-23 with TBL · 914 minutes at five-on-five

Nick Paul52%
Patrick Maroonnow MIN38%
Corey Perrynow CHI23%

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, 2022-23

The club: TBL took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.8% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 914 minutes at five-on-five — 49th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nicholas Paul	50.9%	50.8%	49.0%
Pat Maroon	53.0%	49.5%	46.8%
Victor Hedman	49.9%	51.3%	50.1%

50.9% together, 50.8% for him apart and 49.0% for Paul apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

214 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.