This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ross Colton
Colorado Avalanche Center
16 goals in 61 games from 22 feet out, and a 54.8 per cent chance share on the third line.
| 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 | COL | 61 | 16 | 13 | 29 | -1 | 18 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 125 | 12.8 | 14:25 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 331 | 80 | 72 | 152 | -10 | 169 | 13 | 0 | 16 | 629 | 12.7 | 13:00 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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 13 assists in 61 games for 29 points, minus-1, on 14:25 a night, with 5 on the power play.
54.0 per cent at five-on-five, the 85th percentile, and on-ice goals of 28-25 against an expected 32-27 — the best goal differential per minute on the club. 125 shots from a median of 22 feet with 45 per cent inside 20.
The Finesse Game
A shooter who has organised his entire game around getting to the places shooters score from. Nearly half his attempts come from inside 20 feet, and at 12.8 per cent he converts them at a rate that has been stable for four seasons.
He is not a playmaker — 13 assists in 61 games — and he does not carry a line. What he does is arrive, and the difference between him and the players below him on the depth chart is that he arrives at the net rather than near it.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 194, and he plays a hard, straight, forechecking game that is exactly suited to a third line. He finishes checks, he is willing on the wall, and he takes the punishment that comes with living at the net front.
18 penalty minutes in 61 games is disciplined for the style. The games missed are the concern — he has now had two seasons in a row cut short.
The Intangibles
He scored a Cup-winning goal at 25 and has never played as though it settled anything. Coaches use him on the kill, in the last minute, and against real lines.
At 29 he is at his ceiling and it is a useful one: a 20-goal third-line centre who defends. The contract runs long enough that the last years of it will be paying for a version of this player who no longer gets to those spots.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“the difference between him and the players below him on the depth chart is that he arrives at the net rather than near it”
“He is not a playmaker — 13 assists in 61 games — and he does not carry a line.”
“he plays a hard, straight, forechecking game that is exactly suited to a third line”
“He finishes checks, he is willing on the wall, and he takes the punishment that comes with living at the net front.”
“Coaches use him on the kill, in the last minute, and against real lines.”
“a 20-goal third-line centre who defends”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 768 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54%
- 85th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.3%
- 85th 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: 28 for, 25 against. Expected: 32.0 and 27.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 9 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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, 2024-25 · 61 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 45th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.74 a game
- Distance
- 2.40 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.7 mph
- 57th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 768 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, 2024-25
- The club
- COL took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.0% — 0.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 768 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Girard | 59.9% | 50.0% | 50.7% |
| Sam Malinski | 43.3% | 58.9% | 51.8% |
| Casey Mittelstadt | 42.3% | 59.4% | 44.7% |
59.9% together, 50.0% for him apart and 50.7% for Girard 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
196 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.