This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Aleksander Barkov
Florida Panthers Center
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.
58.3 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 33-21 against an expected 39.9-28.5. 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 an enormous number of defensive-zone draws against the best centres in the league.
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 defensive-zone start — that survives his absence intact. This is the largest single subtraction in this edition.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 901 minutes
- Expected goals
- 58.3%
- 98th pct
- Shot attempts
- 59.9%
- 99th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 21 against. Expected: 39.9 and 28.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe 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 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 901 minutes at five-on-five
- Sam Reinhart87%
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 58.3% — 4.3 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 | 59.6% | 50.2% | 50.0% |
| Gustav Forsling | 59.1% | 57.2% | 50.5% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 62.5% | 54.0% | 51.9% |
59.6% together, 50.2% for him apart and 50.0% 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.