This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Aleksander Barkov

The fifth-highest chance share in this edition, 148 career penalty minutes in 737 games, and the best two-way centre in hockey.

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	FLA	68	23	55	78	+10	8	8	1	6	208	11.1	21:13
2023-24	FLA	73	23	57	80	+33	24	5	0	4	193	11.9	19:38
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	737	266	445	711	+123	148	75	12	48	1948	13.7	20:06

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

73 games, 23 goals and 57 assists for 80 points, 5 on the power play, 24 penalty minutes, 19:38 a night and plus-33. He took 60.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 961 minutes, the 99th percentile, and his ice went 53-23 against an expectation of 46.49-29.99.

That chance share is the fifth-highest of any skater in this edition and the highest of anybody who is not an Oiler. Seven goals fewer conceded than the chances called for, on top of a share that was already the best on a Stanley Cup club.

The Finesse Game

193 shots at a median of 29 feet with 34 per cent from inside 20, converted at 11.9 per cent against a career 13.7.

445 career assists in 737 games. He is 6-3 and 214 and protects the puck as well as any centre in the league, which is the foundation of everything else: he can hold it until the play he wants is available. He wins the wall and he wins it without needing to hit anybody.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 214 and hard to move anywhere on the ice, and 148 career penalty minutes in 737 games is one of the four lowest rates of any scoring centre in this edition.

He defends by taking the puck rather than the man. He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he kills penalties with 12 career shorthanded goals in 737 games.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2013 out of Tampere, eleven seasons, 711 points in 737 games, and a career plus-123. He has been the captain since 2018 and has played his whole career for one organisation.

He is the most defensively responsible front-line centre in the league and he is also the one who takes the fewest penalties doing it. At 29 there is no part of this that looks like it is going away.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
60.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 51.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +9.4, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-3 and 214 and hard to move anywhere on the ice, and 148 career penalty minutes in 737 games is one of the four lowest rates of any scoring centre in this edition.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins the wall and he wins it without needing to hit anybody.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He defends by taking the puck rather than the man.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he kills penalties with 12 career shorthanded goals in 737 games.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he kills penalties with 12 career shorthanded goals in 737 games.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“He has been the captain since 2018 and has played his whole career for one organisation.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 961 minutes

Expected goals: 60.8%; 99th pct
Shot attempts: 58.5%; 97th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 23 against. Expected: 46.5 and 30.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

98th

Numbers

99th

The two rank him within 1 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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, 2023-24 · 73 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.88 a game
Distance: 3.15 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.6 mph; 55th 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

2023-24 · 961 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, 2023-24

The club: FLA took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 60.8% — 7.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 961 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sam Reinhart	60.7%	61.2%	52.6%
Evan Rodrigues	59.4%	62.2%	53.1%
Gustav Forsling	63.5%	57.9%	52.3%

60.7% together, 61.2% for him apart and 52.6% for Reinhart apart. Reinhart was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Reinhart than for 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

283 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.