Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 40?
Each row is one fantasy category turned into points over a full 84-game season. Add the rows up and that is his total fantasy worth.
- proj goals7 × 3+21
- proj assists12 × 1+12
- PP points0 × 0.5+0
- game-winning goals4 × 0.5+2
- OT goals0 × 0.25+0
- shots111 × 0.1+11.1
- PIM71 × 0.05+3.6
- ice time (min)1638 × 0.01+16.4
- total66 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 16666 = 40/100
Weights follow what the average fantasy league actually counts: goals at 3× assists (the universal core), power-play points and game-winners at half weight (common extra categories), OT goals, shots and PIM small (many leagues skip them), and ice time as a quiet availability bonus. The scale: add up a whole season of those categories and compare against the best defensemen in the NHL — an elite season scores about 166 points, and that is what 100 means. So 66 points is 40 out of a perfect fantasy season at his position. Defensemen and forwards are graded on separate scales because the D slot can only be filled by a defenseman. Goals and assists come from the backtested season model; the rest ride your own season-to-date pace over 84 games (19 games so far — small sample, secondary lines will move as roles settle). Hits/blocks are excluded: the free NHL feeds don't publish full-season totals, and we don't invent them.
The Situation
- Every night: in the lineup for all of the team's last 10 games.
- Availability: every game this season — 16 of 16 for FLA.
Every line is measured from our own boxscore ledger; absence reasons from the NHL Status Report and our transaction wire only — no insider guessing.
Finishing check on pace O/U ▲ +1.1
- TRADE VALUE: AT PACE — trade value is what the numbers say it is.
- 8.0% shooting on 25 shots against HIS OWN career baseline of 4.6% (429 shots before this season) — that's 0.8 goals above what his shot volume normally buys for him (1.2 expected goals). on pace. His shrunk talent rate is 5.6%, worth PD +1.1 goals per 84 over/under his own standard.
- His goals track his shot volume almost exactly — what you see is what you have.
Model: goals vs shot volume vs live league position baselines; talent SH% is an empirical-Bayes shrinkage of the season…
His shooting talent is estimated by shrinking his season shooting percentage toward his league position mean in proportion to sample size (kappa pseudo-shots prior), then projecting the gap over 84 games at his current shot volume. Small samples stay near zero — the number only moves when the evidence does.
The method follows published hockey-analytics research: a shooter is judged against his own career shooting percentage, because a player's own career rate predicts his next goals better than any league average (“Expected by Whom? A Skill-Adjusted Expected Goals Model for NHL Shooters and Goaltenders,” arXiv:2511.07703). Thin careers (rookies) shrink toward the league mean for the position, and the season number is shrunk toward the player's own anchor with empirical-Bayes weights — Nandakumar & Jensen (2019), Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, doi:10.1146/annurev-statistics-030718-105202. This section is about the gap between luck and his pace, not talent.
Season stats
NHL regular-season totals, season by season. The 84-G proj line extends the current season with our public model — methodology in the caption below the table.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | P | +/- | PIM | PPG | PPP | SHG | TOI/GP | GWG | OTG | S | S% | FOW% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | Blues | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14:22 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2020-21 | Blues | 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -11 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14:31 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 4.5% | 0.0% |
| 2021-22 | Blues | 54 | 3 | 10 | 13 | -6 | 55 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 16:59 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 5.2% | 0.0% |
| 2022-23 | Blues | 50 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16:39 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2022-23 | Rangers | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18:42 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 3.2% | 0.0% |
| 2023-24 | Panthers | 82 | 3 | 14 | 17 | 11 | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20:02 | 0 | 0 | 93 | 3.2% | 0.0% |
| 2024-25 | Panthers | 76 | 6 | 16 | 22 | 12 | 70 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20:12 | 0 | 0 | 116 | 5.2% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Panthers | 68 | 3 | 8 | 11 | -1 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20:21 | 0 | 0 | 68 | 4.4% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Panthers | 20 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 19:30 | 1 | 0 | 26 | 7.7% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Panthers | 84 | 7 | 12 | 19 | — | 63 | — | 0 | — | 19:20 | — | — | 107 | — | — |
84-G proj — current pace blended with the player's own history (recent seasons weighted heaviest), mixed with a similarity projection from historical players with comparable profiles, then adjusted for the aging curve (league-average peak at 27; decline after) — at age 30 that is -2%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Comparable player-seasons: Erik Gudbranson (2025-25) · Brett Pesce (2025-25) · Zach Bogosian (2025-25) · Troy Stecher (2025-25) · Haydn Fleury (2025-25).
Goals — with the line
| Time | ST | Type | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 12 · vs DET | |||||
| P3 16:29 | EV | Assist | #? (Mikkola) → 4-4 | Bennett · Schwindt Jones · Mikkola | Copp · Raymond · Brandsegg-Nygård Seider · Wallinder Gibson (G) |
| Oct 27 · @ WPG | |||||
| P1 08:42 | EV | Goal | Mikkola (Jones, Tkachuk) → 2-0 | Tkachuk · Bennett · Tkachuk Jones · Gudas · Mikkola | Vilardi · Rosen · Scheifele Ferraro · Salomonsson Stevenson (G) |
| P3 12:10 | EV | Assist | Tkachuk (Tkachuk, Mikkola) → 5-1 | Tkachuk · Bennett · Tkachuk Jones · Mikkola | Mercer · Björck · Lambert Pionk · Samberg Stevenson (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Niko over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seth Jones FLA | 169 | 10 | |
| Lars Eller FLA | 66 | 10 | |
| Eetu Luostarinen FLA | 57 | 10 | |
| Anton Lundell FLA | 54 | 9 | |
| Sam Bennett FLA | 52 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats