This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Blake Lizotte
Los Angeles Kings Center
Five-foot-nine, the 4th-percentile giveaway rate, and 56.9 per cent of the attempts with him on the ice — the 93rd percentile.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | LAK | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 11:12 |
| 2019-20 | LAK | 65 | 6 | 17 | 23 | -4 | 20 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 87 | 6.9 | 13:58 |
| 2020-21 | LAK | 41 | 3 | 7 | 10 | +2 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 7.1 | 12:42 |
| 2021-22 | LAK | 70 | 10 | 14 | 24 | +15 | 28 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 91 | 11.0 | 12:10 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 177 | 19 | 38 | 57 | +12 | 64 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 221 | 8.6 | 12:57 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
10 goals and 14 assists in seventy games at 12:10 a night, plus-15, twenty-eight penalty minutes. 5-9 and 176 pounds, and 177 NHL games at 24.
Nobody drafted a 5-9 centre out of Minnesota and he has now played 177 NHL games, four seasons, and the second-best attempt share among Kings forwards.
The Finesse Game
1.64 even-strength points per 60 is the 41st percentile and not one of his points came on the power play — he played eight seconds a night with the extra man. Everything here is even strength and the kill.
6.41 shots per 60 is the 33rd percentile at 11.0 per cent, 52 per cent from the slot at a 24-foot median. Modest volume, sensible locations.
56.9 per cent of the attempts is the 93rd percentile, second-best among Kings forwards behind Arthur Kaliyev, against 51.8 per cent of the expected goals at the 65th. The gap between those two is the shape of a fourth line: it holds the puck and does not do much with it. His ice went 32-22 against an expectation of 30.60-28.50 — one of the few Kings whose shifts actually outscored the model.
0.70 giveaways per 60 is the 4th percentile and 2.18 takeaways is the 84th — he takes far more than he loses, which almost nobody does.
The Physical Game
5.21 hits per 60 is the 64th percentile at 176 pounds, and 0.85 blocks is the 8th. He initiates and he does not shot-block, which is an unusual way round for a small forward.
1.13 penalties drawn per 60 is the 80th percentile against 0.99 taken. He killed 1:05 a night, the 61st percentile, at 5-9 and 176 pounds.
The Intangibles
9.8 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 48th-most of 365 forwards and 22.9 mph is the 76th percentile. He sprints often and covers an ordinary amount of ground — 85.3 mph is the 18th percentile, the softest shot on the club.
The honest summary is a fourth-line centre who does three things well — sprints, kills, does not turn it over — and shoots like nobody. What makes him worth the page is the attempt share, which at 56.9 per cent is bettered only by Arthur Kaliyev, and which he has produced without a single power-play point to inflate it.
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.
- 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.
“Nobody drafted a 5-9 centre out of Minnesota and he has now played 177 NHL games, four seasons, and the second-best attempt share among Kings forwards.”
“He killed 1:05 a night, the 61st percentile, at 5-9 and 176 pounds.”
“0.70 giveaways per 60 is the 4th percentile and 2.18 takeaways is the 84th — he takes far more than he loses, which almost nobody does.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 761 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.8%
- 69th pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.9%
- 95th 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: 32 for, 22 against. Expected: 30.6 and 28.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 21 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2021-22 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 84th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.99 a game
- Distance
- 1.94 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.3 mph
- 41st 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 84.1
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
2021-22 · 761 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, 2021-22
- The club
- LAK took 52.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 761 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brendan Lemieux | 55.1% | 47.7% | 49.4% |
| Arthur Kaliyev | 53.7% | 49.5% | 59.1% |
| Matt Roy | 51.6% | 51.9% | 53.4% |
55.1% together, 47.7% for him apart and 49.4% for Lemieux 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
122 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.