This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Simon Holmstrom
New York Islanders Right Wing
Fifty games, no penalty minutes at all, and seven goals fewer than his ice deserved.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | NYI | 50 | 6 | 3 | 9 | -4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 39 | 15.4 | 11:06 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 50 | 6 | 3 | 9 | -4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 39 | 15.4 | 11:06 |
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
6 goals and 3 assists in 50 games — 9 points — at 11:06 a night. Minus-4, 39 shots at 15.4 per cent, and no penalty minutes at all.
51.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 60th percentile, across 534 minutes — and his ice finished 14-20 against an expectation of 21.22-20.27. Seven goals short of what the chances deserved at the attacking end, on a club that finished twenty-third in goals for.
He started 52.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 60th percentile, which for a rookie on this roster is nearly the middle.
One season, 50 games, 9 points.
The Finesse Game
39 shots at a median of 26 feet, and six goals.
Inside twenty: 12 shots on goal and 4 goals. Twenty to forty: 21 and 2. Beyond forty: two shots all season.
Thirty-five shots on goal in fifty games is barely enough to say anything, and what it does say is that he goes to the right places and does not shoot when he gets there.
35 wrist shots out of 59 tracked attempts. 85.5 mph at the 14th percentile, on four slap shots.
Three assists in fifty games. There is no playmaking evidence in either direction yet.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 208, and not one penalty minute in fifty games.
Top speed 22.1 mph, the 42nd percentile; 0.7 bursts a game, the 40th; 1.83 miles a game, the 9th.
Middling speed on the lowest mileage of any Islander forward, in eleven minutes a night.
A clean sheet of penalty minutes from a rookie forward reads two ways and this book cannot tell which: it is either exceptional discipline or a player who is never close enough to the puck to have to foul anybody. On a fourth line whose defining trait is 63 penalty minutes from the man beside him, the second reading is hard to dismiss.
He does not initiate contact and is moved off pucks.
The Intangibles
Twenty-third overall in 2019, and a first NHL season at twenty-one, four years after the draft.
Fifty games and nine points is a fourth-line rookie’s line and nothing about it is discouraging at that age.
What the file needs is volume. Thirty-nine shots in fifty games from a first-round pick is the number to watch, because a winger who will not shoot at twenty-one rarely becomes one who will at twenty-five.
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
- 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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.00 penalty minutes a game over 50, 0th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He does not initiate contact and is moved off pucks.”
“A clean sheet of penalty minutes from a rookie forward reads two ways and this book cannot tell which: it is either exceptional discipline or a player who is never close enough to the puck to have to foul anybody.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 534 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.1%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.4%
- 41st 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: 14 for, 20 against. Expected: 21.2 and 20.3.
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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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 · 50 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 49th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.74 a game
- Distance
- 1.83 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.5 mph
- 39th 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 534 minutes at five-on-five
- Anders Lee38%
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
- NYI took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 534 minutes at five-on-five — 18th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anders Lee | 54.1% | 49.0% | 54.0% |
| Noah Dobson | 51.5% | 51.0% | 49.9% |
| Scott Mayfield | 52.4% | 50.4% | 49.5% |
54.1% together, 49.0% for him apart and 54.0% for Lee apart. He was worse away from Lee, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Lee did.
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
56 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.