This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Artturi Lehkonen
Colorado Avalanche Left Wing
Twenty-one goals in 64 games and twenty minutes a night — a checking winger who became a first-line one.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | MTL | 73 | 18 | 10 | 28 | -1 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 158 | 11.4 | 13:52 |
| 2017-18 | MTL | 66 | 12 | 9 | 21 | -11 | 20 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 164 | 7.3 | 16:29 |
| 2018-19 | MTL | 82 | 11 | 20 | 31 | +10 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 176 | 6.3 | 15:33 |
| 2019-20 | MTL | 70 | 13 | 14 | 27 | +2 | 24 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 140 | 9.3 | 15:26 |
| 2020-21 | MTL | 47 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -2 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 78 | 9.0 | 13:25 |
| 2021-22 | MTL/COL | 74 | 19 | 19 | 38 | +1 | 22 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 155 | 12.3 | 15:06 |
| 2022-23 | COL | 64 | 21 | 30 | 51 | +8 | 28 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 150 | 14.0 | 20:27 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 476 | 101 | 108 | 209 | +7 | 140 | 15 | 8 | 16 | 1021 | 9.9 | 15:47 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
21 goals and 30 assists in 64 games, plus-8, 20:27 a night — four minutes more than any season of his career.
51 points is a career high by thirteen. So is the ice time, so is the goal total, and so is the shooting percentage at 14.0.
54.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 81st percentile, with his ice at 48-39 against an expectation of 45.16-38.34. Both ends land almost exactly where the chances said they would — a first-line winger’s results with no percentage help at all, which is the most trustworthy version of a career year.
The Finesse Game
150 shots at a median of 23 feet, 44 per cent from inside twenty, 17 per cent from beyond forty. He shoots from the places goals come from.
Inside forty feet: 120 shots on goal, nineteen goals, 15.83 per cent. Beyond forty: 26 shots, two goals.
21 tip-ins and five deflections in the shot-type record — a fifth of everything he put on net was a redirection. That is a specialist’s number and it is the reason he plays with MacKinnon and Rantanen rather than behind them.
The shot itself is 88.1 mph, the 30th percentile. Nothing about the goals comes from the shot.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 179, and 3.03 miles a game at the 81st percentile — a lot of ground for a winger, and the reason he was trusted with twenty minutes.
22.8 mph at the 79th percentile with 1.5 bursts a game at the 74th. He is quick enough to forecheck first and durable enough to do it all night.
28 penalty minutes in 64 games. He plays a hard game inside the rules, which is the rarest of the physical profiles in this book.
The Intangibles
55th overall in 2013, six seasons in Montreal as a defensive winger who could not score, and then a trade to Colorado in 2022 and a Cup ten weeks later.
He scored the goal that put Montreal in the 2021 Final and the goal that won Colorado the 2022 Western Conference. Twice, in consecutive years, for opposite teams. That is the kind of record this book has no metric for and should say out loud anyway.
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.
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:53 a game at five-on-five, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“21 tip-ins and five deflections in the shot-type record — a fifth of everything he put on net was a redirection.”
“He is quick enough to forecheck first and durable enough to do it all night.”
“six seasons in Montreal as a defensive winger who could not score”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 952 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.1%
- 81st pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.8%
- 89th 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: 48 for, 39 against. Expected: 45.2 and 38.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2022-23 · 64 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 83rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.53 a game
- Distance
- 3.03 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.1 mph
- 55th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 · 952 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, 2022-23
- The club
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.1% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 952 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan MacKinnon | 53.4% | 55.5% | 56.5% |
| Devon Toews | 53.9% | 54.3% | 58.3% |
| Mikko Rantanen | 51.6% | 56.8% | 54.0% |
53.4% together, 55.5% for him apart and 56.5% for MacKinnon apart. MacKinnon was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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
208 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.