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

Aleksander Barkov

Eighty-eight points in 67 games, the 10th-most even-strength points of the 393 qualified forwards, and the 30th-fewest penalties drawn.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2013-14	FLA	54	8	16	24	-3	10	3	0	1	87	9.2	17:06
2014-15	FLA	71	16	20	36	-4	16	3	0	3	123	13.0	17:30
2015-16	FLA	66	28	31	59	+18	8	9	1	8	171	16.4	19:26
2016-17	FLA	61	21	31	52	+13	10	3	0	5	142	14.8	19:24
2017-18	FLA	79	27	51	78	+9	14	5	5	3	256	10.5	22:04
2018-19	FLA	82	35	61	96	-3	8	13	0	5	206	17.0	22:21
2019-20	FLA	66	20	42	62	+2	18	7	0	2	172	11.6	20:01
2020-21	FLA	50	26	32	58	+12	14	7	1	6	176	14.8	20:56
2021-22	FLA	67	39	49	88	+36	18	12	4	5	214	18.2	20:18
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	596	220	333	553	+80	116	62	11	38	1547	14.2	20:02

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

39 goals and 49 assists in 67 games — 88 points and a plus-36 at 20:18 a night, the 95th percentile among forwards — with 18 penalty minutes. 3:29 a night on the power play is the 95th percentile and 2:10 short-handed is the 95th.

58.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 918 minutes, the 17th-highest of the 393 qualified forwards. Florida took 122 points, the Presidents’ Trophy, and led the league in goals, chance share and attempt share.

Ten playoff games for six points as Florida beat Washington in six and was swept by Tampa Bay.

The Finesse Game

3.48 even-strength points per 60 is the 10th-most of the 393 qualified forwards — and thirty per cent of his points came on the power play, the 79th percentile, which is a lower dependence than most men at his level.

Thirty-nine goals on 214 shots is 18.2 per cent, the 25th-highest conversion rate of 393, off 9.44 shots per 60 at the 83rd. 54 per cent from the slot at a median of 23 feet — ordinary locations, extraordinary conversion, and the conversion is the number least likely to hold.

2.60 takeaways per 60 is the 16th-most of 393 against 2.25 giveaways at the 86th. He takes the puck off people at a rate almost no forward in the league matches, and it is the reason he plays two minutes a night short-handed on the best club in hockey.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 214. 2.21 hits per 60 is the 24th percentile and 1.85 blocks the 56th. He does not play a contact game; he plays a stick game.

10.08 miles per 60 is the 87th percentile against a 22.5 mph top speed at the 53rd and 4.7 bursts over 20 mph per 60 at the 45th. He covers a great deal of ground at ordinary speed, which is the tracking’s description of a two-way centre who is always in the play and never in a race.

0.35 penalties drawn per 60 is the 30th-fewest of the 393 qualified forwards. That is an odd figure for a great player and it says something specific: he is very hard to foul because he is very hard to catch out of position, not because he is fast.

0.40 penalties taken per 60 is the 20th percentile — eighteen minutes in sixty-seven games.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2013, and 596 NHL games at 26 with 553 points and a career plus-80.

With Aaron Ekblad he took 65.2 per cent of the chances over 594 attempts and 56.5 without him. With MacKenzie Weegar 64.3 over 883 and 52.3 without. Weegar has gone to Calgary.

With Carter Verhaeghe he is at 60.6 over 1,199 attempts and 53.4 without, over 539. Verhaeghe away from him is at 57.2. That direction is worth naming: on a club this good, the centre is not obviously the driver of his own line.

Sixty-seven games, and sixty-seven the season before that was fifty. The availability is the only thing on this page that argues against him.

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

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
7 of his 39 goals late or in overtime, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He takes the puck off people at a rate almost no forward in the league matches, and it is the reason he plays two minutes a night short-handed on the best club in hockey.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He does not play a contact game; he plays a stick game.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“he is very hard to foul because he is very hard to catch out of position, not because he is fast”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 918 minutes

Expected goals: 58.4%; 97th pct
Shot attempts: 58.3%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 34 against. Expected: 50.9 and 36.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

99th

Numbers

97th

The two rank him within 2 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 — 80 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 · 67 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 68th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.60 a game
Distance: 3.41 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.3 mph; 87th 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 · 918 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, 2021-22

The club: FLA took 56.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.4% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 918 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Carter Verhaeghe	60.6%	53.4%	57.2%
MacKenzie Weegar	64.3%	52.3%	55.3%
Anthony Duclair	57.4%	59.1%	49.6%

60.6% together, 53.4% for him apart and 57.2% for Verhaeghe apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

273 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 42 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.