This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Barrett Hayton

Nineteen goals on the sixth-percentile shot, all of them from inside the dots.

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

2019-20	ARI	20	1	3	4	+2	14	0	0	1	27	3.7	11:09
2020-21	ARI	14	2	1	3	-1	0	0	0	0	10	20.0	11:29
2021-22	ARI	60	10	14	24	-8	20	2	0	1	82	12.2	16:07
2022-23	ARI	82	19	24	43	-5	42	4	0	4	178	10.7	17:30
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	176	32	42	74	-12	76	6	0	6	297	10.8	15:50

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

19 goals and 24 assists in 82 games — 43 points at 17:30 a night, minus-5, with 4 power-play goals and 4 game-winners on 178 shots, converting at 10.67 per cent, and 42 penalty minutes.

The first healthy full season of his career, and 50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,109 minutes, the 59th percentile — the best of any centre here. His ice went 51-53 against an expectation of 46.28-44.73.

The Finesse Game

178 attempts at a median of 20 feet, with 47 per cent from inside 20 and only 9 per cent from beyond 40 — the most concentrated shot chart on the roster.

The shot itself is measured at 82.8 mph, the 6th percentile in the league. He scores nineteen goals anyway, and the two facts together describe the player exactly: he does not beat goaltenders from distance and he does not try to. Everything comes from the slot and from arriving there before somebody stops him.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 200 and he plays a heavier game than the offensive numbers suggest. He wins pucks below the goal line and he goes to the net through people rather than around them.

The skating is average — 22.3 mph at the 49th percentile — and it is enough for a game played in a twenty-foot radius.

The Intangibles

Fifth overall in 2018, and the first four years were bad enough that the pick was widely called a mistake — shoulder surgery, a season that began back in junior, and 74 points in 176 games before this season.

He is 23 and has just delivered a 43-point season as a second-line centre. That is not what fifth overall is drafted for, and it is a real NHL player, and the gap between those two sentences is the whole of Arizona’s decade.

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
82 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
50.9% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 43.3% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.6, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Everything comes from the slot and from arriving there before somebody stops him.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins pucks below the goal line and he goes to the net through people rather than around them.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,109 minutes

Expected goals: 50.9%; 59th pct
Shot attempts: 49.5%; 48th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 53 against. Expected: 46.3 and 44.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

61st

Numbers

59th

The two rank him within 2 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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

2022-23 · 1109 minutes at five-on-five

Clayton Keller58%
Nick Schmaltz46%
Nick Ritchieoff the roster23%

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: ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 5.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,109 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Clayton Keller	54.9%	44.3%	42.4%
Nick Schmaltz	56.1%	45.5%	43.7%
Juuso Välimäki	55.5%	47.3%	49.1%

54.9% together, 44.3% for him apart and 42.4% for Keller 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

231 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.