Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

46

Blake Lizotte

Pittsburgh Penguins Center

Undrafted at 5-9, with 154 penalty minutes in 320 games and more career shorthanded goals than power-play ones.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19LAK1000-1000010.011:12
2019-20LAK6561723-420220876.913:58
2020-21LAK413710+216000427.112:42
2021-22LAK70101424+15280129111.012:10
2022-23LAK81112334+117000110810.212:57
2023-24LAK627815+1120022769.211:49
2024-25 so far
Career3203769106+341542554059.112:44

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

62 games with Los Angeles, 7 goals and 8 assists for 15 points, 2 shorthanded, 20 penalty minutes, 11:49 a night and plus-11, with 2 game-winners. He took 51.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 625 minutes, the 64th percentile, and his ice went 22-15 against an expectation of 23.09-21.67.

Level with the chances at the offensive end and seven goals of goaltending above them at the other. Two shorthanded goals out of seven is the second time in six seasons he has scored more than one.

The Finesse Game

96 attempts at a median of 24 feet with 43 per cent of them from inside twenty, 72 of those on goal, converted at 9.2 per cent against a career 9.14 across 405 shots.

Sixty-nine career assists against 37 goals in 320 games. He plays the game at one speed and it is a very high one; the puck comes off his stick early because he has already been hit twice getting to it, and 106 points from a fourth-line centre is the return on that.

The Physical Game

He is 5-9 and 176 and took 20 penalty minutes.

154 career penalty minutes in 320 games is a remarkable total for the smallest skater on this roster. He finishes every check he can reach and starts a good deal of what follows, and a fair share of those minutes are the second man in.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, six seasons, all of them in Los Angeles until now, and 106 points in 320 games.

Five career shorthanded goals against two on the power play, and a career plus-34. He was undrafted, reached the league at 21, and has not been out of a lineup for long since.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 625 minutes

Expected goals
51.6%
65th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.4%
81st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 15 against. Expected: 23.1 and 21.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
65th

The 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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

2023-24 with LAK · 625 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, 2023-24

The club
LAK took 54.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.6% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 625 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Trevor Lewis54.2%43.8%48.5%
Carl Grundstrom55.8%49.2%52.2%
Matt Roy52.7%51.0%55.7%

54.2% together, 43.8% for him apart and 48.5% for Lewis 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

96 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.