Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

23

Carter Verhaeghe

Florida Panthers Center

242 shots and 20 goals — an 8.3 per cent rate — on a 55.9 per cent chance share.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20TBL529413-981015715.89:22
2020-21FLA43181836+243111310716.817:44
2021-22FLA78243155+244800416714.416:03
2022-23FLA81423173+104670227515.317:30
2023-24FLA76343872+173680724613.817:58
2024-25FLA81203353-14465052428.317:52
2025-26 so far
Career411147155302+5221522122109413.416:23

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

20 goals and 33 assists in 81 games for 53 points, minus-14, on 17:52 a night and 242 shots — the most on the club.

55.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 94th percentile. 8.3 per cent shooting, against a career rate above 13, on the second-highest shot volume in the chapter. That is roughly 12 goals that did not arrive, and it is the largest single component of Florida finishing 27th.

The Finesse Game

A rush scorer with genuine speed and a quick release, and the whole game is arriving into space with the puck already moving. 35 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet and the locations have not changed from the seasons when he scored 42 and 34.

33 assists is a fair total. He is a finisher who needs a passer, and the club’s best one played 52 games.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 183, and light. He does not win pucks on the wall, does not forecheck with weight, and does not go to the net front except off the rush.

46 penalty minutes over 81 games is a moderate rate. The durability has been excellent — five consecutive seasons above 78 games.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, three organisations, two Cups, and a reputation as one of the more reliable playoff scorers of his era.

At 30 on a long contract, the projection is a return to 30 goals rather than a decline. 242 shots at 8.3 per cent is not a skill change; it is a season.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,115 minutes

Expected goals
55.9%
94th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
56.5%
94th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 43 for, 28 against. Expected: 51.0 and 40.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
94th

The two rank him within 18 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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

2024-25 · 1115 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
FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.9% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,115 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Gustav Forsling55.1%56.6%52.5%
Aleksander Barkov62.5%51.9%54.0%
Sam Reinhart62.9%51.9%53.0%

55.1% together, 56.6% for him apart and 52.5% for Forsling apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

344 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.