Points by season
Career NHL points, ending with the 84-game projection (violet).
Pool value
Projected full-season fantasy worth.
why 28?
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 goals2 × 3+6
- proj assists17 × 1+17
- PP points0 × 0.5+0
- game-winning goals0 × 0.5+0
- OT goals0 × 0.25+0
- shots74 × 0.1+7.4
- PIM59 × 0.05+3
- ice time (min)1287 × 0.01+12.9
- total46 pool points · an elite defenseman season scores 16646 = 28/100
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 46 points is 28 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 (17 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
- Trust is growing: 15:42/game over the last 6, up 18% from 13:17 earlier in the season.
- Cold window: 0.0 pts/10 over the last 6 vs 3.8/10 baseline — pace has fallen off.
- Every night: in the lineup for all of the team's last 10 games.
- Availability: played 14 of 16 for OTT — missed 2 games (2026-10-13, 2026-10-15).
- Not on the NHL Status Report — recent absences were healthy scratches or coach's decisions unless a wire note says otherwise.
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 • −0.7
- TRADE VALUE: AT PACE — trade value is what the numbers say it is.
- 0.0% shooting on 15 shots against HIS OWN career baseline of 4.6% (82 shots before this season) — that's 0.7 goals below what his shot volume normally buys for him (0.7 expected goals). on pace. His shrunk talent rate is 3.7%, worth PD −0.7 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% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | Senators | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7:00 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2024-25 | Senators | 41 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -2 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12:37 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 2.3% | 0.0% |
| 2025-26 | Senators | 50 | 0 | 5 | 5 | -1 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15:38 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 2026-27 | Senators | 18 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15:11 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 84-G proj | Senators | 84 | 2 | 17 | 19 | — | 56 | — | 0 | — | 16:52 | — | — | 86 | — | — |
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 28 that is -1%. Dashes mark stats the model doesn't project.
Goals — with the line
| Time | ST | Type | Goal | His line | Opp ice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 29 · @ LAK | |||||
| P3 07:18 | EV | Assist | Cozens (Stützle, Matinpalo) → 2-5 | Zetterlund · Cozens · Stützle Zub · Matinpalo | Perry · Moore · Byfield Gustafsson · Anderson Kuemper (G) |
| Oct 22 · vs SJS | |||||
| P3 06:24 | EV | Assist | Spence (Zetterlund, #?) → 2-4 | Zetterlund · Cousins · Greig Spence · Kleven | Marchment · Celebrini · Toffoli Kesselring · Nurse Askarov (G) |
Line mates
Teammates sharing the most ice time with Nikolas over the last 10 games — reconstructed shift-by-shift from the NHL's official timing feed (goalies excluded).
| Player | Shared min | GP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Kleven OTT | 88 | 9 | |
| Tim Stützle OTT | 44 | 10 | |
| Dylan Cozens OTT | 38 | 10 | |
| Michael Amadio OTT | 36 | 10 | |
| Fabian Zetterlund OTT | 35 | 10 |
Data via the public NHL API · 2026 Pro Hockey Stats