This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ross Colton
Colorado Avalanche Center
Forty-four per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet, sixty-one penalty minutes, and the goal that won a Stanley Cup.
| 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 | COL | 80 | 17 | 23 | 40 | -8 | 61 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 146 | 11.6 | 13:43 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 270 | 64 | 59 | 123 | -9 | 151 | 8 | 0 | 13 | 504 | 12.7 | 12:41 |
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
Eighty games, 17 goals and 23 assists with 3 on the power play, 61 penalty minutes, 13:43 a night and minus-8. He converted 11.64 per cent of 146 shots against a career 12.70.
He took 52.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 965 minutes, the 69th percentile, and his ice went 42-46 against an expectation of 44.82-41.23. Forty points from a third-line centre at 13:43 a night is good value.
The Finesse Game
One hundred and forty-six shots at a median of 23 feet with 44 per cent from inside 20. He shoots from the slot and gets there on his own.
Sixty-four goals in 270 career games at 12.70 per cent is a real finishing rate for a bottom-six forward. Twenty-three assists is the higher of the two numbers and the passing is the weaker half — 59 in 270 games is a third-line rate.
The Physical Game
He forechecks hard and finishes his checks, and 61 penalty minutes in 80 games is what that costs. At 6-0 and 194 he is not large and he plays as though he does not know it.
He wins the wall against wingers and holds pucks below the goal line for a change. On a club killing five minutes a night, 61 penalty minutes from a third-line centre is also a genuine cost.
The Intangibles
A fourth-round pick in 2016 who scored the only goal of the game that won a Stanley Cup in 2021. He is 28, in his second season in Colorado, and has 123 points in 270 games.
He is the third centre on the club and the club plays him thirteen minutes. That is what depth looks like when a roster is built properly.
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
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He forechecks hard and finishes his checks, and 61 penalty minutes in 80 games is what that costs.”
“He wins the wall against wingers and holds pucks below the goal line for a change.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 965 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.1%
- 69th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.8%
- 77th 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: 42 for, 46 against. Expected: 44.8 and 41.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 52 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 — 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, 2023-24 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 3.00 a game
- Distance
- 2.29 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.8 mph
- 87th 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 · 965 minutes at five-on-five
- Miles Wood64%
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
- COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.1% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 965 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miles Wood | 51.0% | 54.5% | 41.5% |
| Logan O'Connor | 54.3% | 50.4% | 50.5% |
| Jack Johnson | 50.8% | 52.8% | 46.2% |
51.0% together, 54.5% for him apart and 41.5% for Wood apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Wood behind.
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
239 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.