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

Anthony Cirelli

The 96th percentile of chances, 27 goals, four shorthanded goals, and the best defensive forward in this chapter.

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

2017-18	TBL	18	5	6	11	+11	6	0	0	0	26	19.2	13:14
2018-19	TBL	82	19	20	39	+25	34	0	5	5	123	15.4	14:51
2019-20	TBL	68	16	28	44	+28	30	1	1	3	113	14.2	18:27
2020-21	TBL	50	9	13	22	0	10	1	2	3	75	12.0	17:45
2021-22	TBL	76	17	26	43	+15	70	3	1	4	146	11.6	18:19
2022-23	TBL	58	11	18	29	+13	33	1	2	1	111	9.9	16:34
2023-24	TBL	79	20	25	45	+2	38	3	2	3	129	15.5	18:31
2024-25	TBL	80	27	32	59	+30	28	3	4	2	160	16.9	18:41
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	511	124	168	292	+124	249	12	17	21	883	14.0	17:26

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

27 goals and 32 assists in 80 games — 59 points at 18:41 a night, plus-30, with 4 shorthanded goals and 28 penalty minutes on 160 shots.

57.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five — the 96th percentile and the best figure on the club. His ice went 53-38 against an expectation of 53.47-39.37 — six goals of scoring missing and the goals against almost exactly on the chances, which for a man taking the hardest matchup on a Stanley Cup roster is the point.

The Finesse Game

160 attempts at a median of 20 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20, converting at 16.9 per cent for a career-high 27 goals.

32 assists. The offensive game has been an addition rather than the point — he is a defensive centre who scores, and the reason he scores is that his line spends the shift in the other end.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 193 and quick rather than heavy. He kills plays before they start: he closes on a puck carrier faster than almost any forward in the league, he takes the puck rather than the man, and he blocks shots.

28 penalty minutes in 80 games at nearly nineteen minutes a night against first lines is a low rate. He is very rarely beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he wins the draw that begins the shift.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2015 and 511 games, 292 points, a career plus-124 and two Stanley Cups.

He is 28. He has been a Selke finalist and he has never won it, and on a club that is 8th in the league on the penalty kill he is the first man over the boards.

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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +9.7, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“**He kills plays before they start**: he closes on a puck carrier faster than almost any forward in the league, he takes the puck rather than the man, and he blocks shots.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“**He kills plays before they start**: he closes on a puck carrier faster than almost any forward in the league, he takes the puck rather than the man, and he blocks shots.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“he closes on a puck carrier faster than almost any forward in the league, he takes the puck rather than the man, and he blocks shots.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“He is very rarely beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he wins the draw that begins the shift.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He is very rarely beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he wins the draw that begins the shift.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He is 28. He has been a Selke finalist and he has never won it, and on a club that is 8th in the league on the penalty kill he is the first man over the boards.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“160 attempts at a median of 20 feet with **48 per cent from inside 20**, converting at 16.9 per cent for a career-high 27 goals.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,125 minutes

Expected goals: 57.6%; 97th pct
Shot attempts: 55.1%; 92nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 38 against. Expected: 53.5 and 39.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

96th

Numbers

97th

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 — 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, 2024-25 · 80 games

Top speed: 23.2 mph; 91st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.51 a game
Distance: 2.76 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.2 mph; 52nd 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 · 1125 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: TBL took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.6% — 6.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,125 minutes at five-on-five — 79th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brandon Hagel	58.6%	51.9%	48.4%
Ryan McDonagh	53.2%	62.5%	51.6%
Erik Cernak	50.6%	63.4%	51.3%

58.6% together, 51.9% for him apart and 48.4% for Hagel 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

229 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.