This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Aaron Ekblad

The 2nd-highest chance share and the 5th-most even-strength points of the 202 qualified defencemen — and the 15th-fewest blocks.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	554	97	194	291	+72	334	32	1	21	1374	7.1	22:57

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

15 goals and 42 assists in 61 games — 57 points and a plus-38 at 24:55 a night, the 94th percentile among defencemen — with 26 penalty minutes. 3:31 a night on the power play is the 98th percentile and 2:48 short-handed is the 91st.

59.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,093 minutes — the 2nd-highest of the 202 qualified defencemen. Only one defenceman in the league spent more of his ice time in front of the puck.

Florida won the Presidents’ Trophy with 122 points, beat Washington in six and was swept by Tampa Bay.

The Finesse Game

1.80 even-strength points per 60 is the 5th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen. 7.10 shots per 60 is the 95th percentile and fifteen goals on 180 shots is 8.3 per cent, the 91st.

Thirty-five per cent of his points came on the power play off 3:31 a night — so two-thirds of a 57-point season arrived at even strength, which for a defenceman is the harder half.

1.70 takeaways per 60 is the 92nd percentile against 2.88 giveaways at the 94th. He has the puck constantly.

The median shot travels 49 feet and 15 per cent come from the slot — an ordinary chart, taken at an extraordinary rate.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 220, and the physical numbers do not match the size.

2.72 blocks per 60 is the 15th-fewest of the 202 qualified defencemen and 2.45 hits is the 51st-fewest. At nearly twenty-five minutes a night on the best club in the league, both figures are near the floor. The puck was at the other end and there was very little to block.

22.0 mph is the 54th percentile, 1.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 37th, and 8.19 miles per 60 is the 45th of 192 from the bottom. He is an ordinary skater by the league’s own measurement, which is worth stating for a man whose reputation is built on carrying the puck.

0.51 penalties taken per 60 is the 34th percentile — twenty-six minutes in sixty-one games.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2014, and 554 NHL games at 26 with 291 points and a career plus-72.

Sixty-one games last season and thirty-five the year before. He has played seventy games twice in the last five seasons, and availability is the single largest question on the page.

With MacKenzie Weegar he took 58.3 per cent of the chances over 1,775 attempts and 65.9 without him — but that apart-sample is 264 attempts, which is barely three hours and should not be leaned on. Weegar without him took 57.4 over 1,179, which is a real number, and Weegar has gone to Calgary.

With Aleksander Barkov he is at 65.2 over 594 attempts and 56.5 without. The best pair figures in this book belong to a club that has now sold two of the men in them.

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
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.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
3 of his 15 goals late or in overtime, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
59.4% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 55.5% for his club in the minutes he sat: +3.9, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He has the puck constantly.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“At nearly twenty-five minutes a night on the best club in the league, both figures are near the floor.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,093 minutes

Expected goals: 59.4%; 98th pct
Shot attempts: 58.5%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 68 for, 40 against. Expected: 59.0 and 40.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

81st

Numbers

98th

The two rank him within 17 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2021-22 · 61 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 68th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.49 a game
Distance: 3.40 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.3 mph; 44th pct

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

2021-22 · 1093 minutes at five-on-five

MacKenzie Weegarnow CGY90%

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, 2021-22

The club: FLA took 56.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 59.4% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,093 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
MacKenzie Weegar	58.3%	65.9%	57.4%
Carter Verhaeghe	64.2%	56.7%	56.6%
Jonathan Huberdeau	57.3%	60.3%	51.9%

58.3% together, 65.9% for him apart and 57.4% for Weegar apart. He was better away from Weegar, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Weegar.

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

233 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.