Adam Larsson

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

8 goals and 25 assists in 82 games — 33 points — at 23:38 a night. Plus-27, 143 shots at 5.6 per cent, one shorthanded, two game-winners, 47 penalty minutes.

33 points is a career high by eight, in his twelfth season, and the plus-27 is a career best by six.

54 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 78th percentile, across 1,630 five-on-five minutes — more than any skater in this book except Erik Karlsson. His ice finished 87-66 against an expectation of 71.45-60.96.

He started 62.5 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 94th percentile: 601 attacking draws against 361 defensive ones. That is a first-pair defenceman on a club that could afford to start its best pair in the attacking end, and it is the deployment rather than a limitation.

The Finesse Game

143 shots at a median of 54 feet, with 71 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 6 per cent from inside twenty.

Beyond forty feet: 94 shots on goal and three goals — 3.19 per cent, which is the league rate for defencemen of 3.17 almost exactly. Inside twenty: 13 shots and four goals, 30.77 per cent. From twenty to forty: 23 shots and none.

So four of his eight goals came from thirteen shots on goal inside twenty feet, and three came from ninety-four from the point. That is the positional rate doing precisely what it says it does.

208 tracked attempts, 133 of them wrist shots and 44 slap — a 21.2 per cent share. 96.1 mph at the 84th percentile.

There is nothing offensive to build on here and the 33 points came from volume and from being on the ice with Vince Dunn. The value is at the other end and always has been.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 207 pounds, and 3.35 miles a game at the 95th percentile at a top speed of 21.4 mph — the 11th percentile — with 0.3 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 14th.

That is the most extreme version in this chapter of a shape this book has now measured many times: enormous ground covered by a man who is never quick. Of the fifty-nine defencemen in the league who covered three miles a game, 24 never break 22 mph, so this is close to the norm for the workload rather than a verdict on him — but the 11th percentile is at the bottom even of that group.

He defends by arriving early and finishing the check. At twenty-four minutes a night against first lines, that is a great deal of contact and it is why 47 penalty minutes is a low number for the way he plays.

449 penalty minutes in 767 career games. He is punishing, he is disciplined about it, and he has been the same player for twelve years.

The Intangibles

Fourth overall in 2011, twelve seasons, 767 games, 195 points across New Jersey, Edmonton and Seattle.

41 goals in twelve years, and no power-play goals at all. A top-five pick who has become a defensive first-pair defenceman is not a disappointment; it is what a fourth-overall defenceman most often becomes.

He is thirty, and the 1,630 minutes are the number that matters. A club that finished third in the league in expected goals against per sixty played this man more than any of its skaters, in the attacking end, and finished plus-21 with him on the ice.

What the file cannot separate is Larsson from Dunn: they played almost all of it together, and the two records are close to the same record.