Photo by 5of7, CC BY-SA 2.0
Aaron Ekblad
Florida Panthers Defense #5
The 1st overall pick in 2014, 800 games later, doing the quiet half.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | FLA | 81 | 12 | 27 | 39 | +12 | 32 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 170 | 7.1 | 21:49 |
| 2015-16 | FLA | 78 | 15 | 21 | 36 | +18 | 41 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 182 | 8.2 | 21:41 |
| 2016-17 | FLA | 68 | 10 | 11 | 21 | -23 | 58 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 225 | 4.4 | 21:28 |
| 2017-18 | FLA | 82 | 16 | 22 | 38 | +9 | 71 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 189 | 8.5 | 23:23 |
| 2018-19 | FLA | 82 | 13 | 24 | 37 | +1 | 47 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 180 | 7.2 | 23:39 |
| 2019-20 | FLA | 67 | 5 | 36 | 41 | +12 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 147 | 3.4 | 22:59 |
| 2020-21 | FLA | 35 | 11 | 11 | 22 | +5 | 33 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 101 | 10.9 | 25:05 |
| 2021-22 | FLA | 61 | 15 | 42 | 57 | +38 | 26 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 180 | 8.3 | 24:55 |
| 2022-23 | FLA | 71 | 14 | 24 | 38 | -14 | 68 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 216 | 6.5 | 23:24 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 51 | 4 | 14 | 18 | +27 | 50 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 98 | 4.1 | 20:52 |
| 2024-25 | FLA | 56 | 3 | 30 | 33 | +11 | 53 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 106 | 2.8 | 23:31 |
| 2025-26 | FLA | 72 | 4 | 22 | 26 | -5 | 55 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 97 | 4.1 | 22:29 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 804 | 122 | 284 | 406 | +91 | 560 | 42 | 2 | 29 | 1891 | 6.5 | 22:51 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
4 goals and 22 assists in 72 games — 26 points, minus-5, at 22:29 a night with 55 penalty minutes.
The Finesse Game
The offence went years ago and nobody minds. 154 unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, 6 per cent inside 20, 4 goals — the lowest total of his career.
122 goals in 804 games says what he was as a young man. 22 assists says what he is now: a defenceman who moves it to Forsling and defends.
The Physical Game
6-4, 220, and he plays a properly heavy game. 55 penalty minutes, a willingness to fight, and he is the man Florida sends to clear a crease.
The body has taken a great deal — a broken leg, a shoulder, a run of springs played visibly hurt — and 72 games is a reasonable season by his standards now.
The Intangibles
50.4 per cent of the expected goals, 58th percentile, and 52.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 76th, across 1,221 minutes of the hardest available assignment.
The goals went 54-57 against him while his own chances came out 52.3 to 51.5. That gap is Florida’s goaltending, which conceded 19 more than the shots it faced and was the fifth-worst in the league at five-on-five, and none of it is his.
1 point in his last 10. He is 30, the first pick in 2014, 2 Stanley Cups, and a career that stopped being about points a long time ago and got better for it.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,221 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.4%
- 58th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.3%
- 76th 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: 54 for, 57 against. Expected: 52.3 and 51.5.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 9 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2025-26 · 72 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 51st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.31 a game
- Distance
- 3.17 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.5 mph
- 29th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
1
points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 0 assists, 17 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1221 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, 2025-26
- The club
- FLA took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.4% — level with the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,221 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gustav Forsling | 51.4% | 42.9% | 55.3% |
| Anton Lundell | 50.6% | 50.3% | 49.9% |
| Eetu Luostarinen | 53.1% | 49.1% | 51.5% |
51.4% together, 42.9% for him apart and 55.3% for Forsling apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Forsling and did not follow him.
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
154 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.