This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Aleksander Barkov

The best two-way centre in hockey, a 58.3 per cent chance share, and a knee that will cost the champions their season.

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	FLA	67	20	51	71	+1	16	9	1	4	149	13.4	20:15
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	804	286	496	782	+124	164	84	13	52	2097	13.6	20:07

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

20 goals and 51 assists in 67 games for 71 points, plus-1, on 20:15 a night.

58.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 98th percentile, with a 59.9 per cent shot-attempt share — while taking the hardest defensive assignment on a Stanley Cup winner. His on-ice goals were 37-27 against an expected 40.2-29.0. He won a third Selke trophy and did not miss a shift in the postseason.

The Finesse Game

The most complete centre in the league and the least demonstrative. The stick is the defining tool — he takes pucks off attackers in the neutral zone as reliably as anybody alive, and the interceptions are how his offence starts.

51 assists in 67 games is the offensive half and it comes from patience: he holds the puck below the goal line until a lane appears rather than forcing one. 149 shots and 20 goals at 13.4 per cent is a fair rate for a man who shoots only when the better option is gone.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 213, and he is far stronger on pucks than his reputation for elegance suggests. He wins the wall, protects possession with his back to pressure, and takes the draw against the best centres in the league. The defensive-zone half of that is real in number and not in balance: he was on the ice for 253 defensive-zone starts and 338 attacking ones. 57.2 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 78th percentile — Florida gives the matchup centre the puck rather than asking him to go and get it.

16 penalty minutes over 67 games while playing those minutes is the number that describes him best. Nothing is ever late, because nothing is ever out of position.

The Intangibles

The captain, twelve seasons in one organisation, two Cups, three Selkes, and no meaningful public profile outside Florida.

And then a knee. He tore both ligaments in training camp in September and will miss the season the club begins as champions. There is no replacement on this roster and there is no version of Florida’s structure — the matchup centre, the penalty kill, the draw — that survives his absence intact. This is the largest single subtraction in this edition.

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
58.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 52.8% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.3, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“The stick is the defining tool — he takes pucks off attackers in the neutral zone as reliably as anybody alive, and the interceptions are how his offence starts.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“51 assists in 67 games is the offensive half and it comes from patience: he holds the puck below the goal line until a lane appears rather than forcing one.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins the wall, protects possession with his back to pressure, and takes the draw against the best centres in the league.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“takes the draw against the best centres in the league”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“while taking the hardest defensive assignment on a Stanley Cup winner”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“The captain, twelve seasons in one organisation, two Cups, three Selkes, and no meaningful public profile outside Florida.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 901 minutes

Expected goals: 58.1%; 98th pct
Shot attempts: 59.8%; 99th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 27 against. Expected: 40.3 and 29.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

99th

Numbers

98th

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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 88 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, 2024-25 · 67 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 61st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.03 a game
Distance: 3.26 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.0 mph; 59th 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

2024-25 · 901 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, 2024-25

The club: FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.1% — 4.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 901 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Sam Reinhart	59.7%	49.4%	52.2%
Gustav Forsling	59.5%	56.2%	51.5%
Carter Verhaeghe	61.9%	54.3%	49.8%

59.7% together, 49.4% for him apart and 52.2% for Reinhart 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

238 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.