This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Clayton Keller
Arizona Coyotes Right Wing
Eighty-six points at 5-10 and 175 pounds, on a club playing its home games in a college rink.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | ARI | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 12:40 |
| 2017-18 | ARI | 82 | 23 | 42 | 65 | -7 | 24 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 212 | 10.8 | 18:05 |
| 2018-19 | ARI | 82 | 14 | 33 | 47 | -21 | 24 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 200 | 7.0 | 18:14 |
| 2019-20 | ARI | 70 | 17 | 27 | 44 | -6 | 28 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 184 | 9.2 | 16:18 |
| 2020-21 | ARI | 56 | 14 | 21 | 35 | -5 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 124 | 11.3 | 16:40 |
| 2021-22 | ARI | 67 | 28 | 35 | 63 | +3 | 28 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 177 | 15.8 | 20:08 |
| 2022-23 | ARI | 82 | 37 | 49 | 86 | -2 | 49 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 223 | 16.6 | 20:45 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 442 | 133 | 209 | 342 | -41 | 171 | 24 | 2 | 19 | 1120 | 11.9 | 18:25 |
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
37 goals and 49 assists in 82 games — 86 points at 20:45 a night, minus-2, with 6 power-play goals, a shorthanded goal and 4 game-winners on 223 shots, converting at 16.59 per cent, and 49 penalty minutes.
It is the best season anybody has had in this uniform since the club moved to Arizona, and it was produced on a team that finished 27th. 48.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,316 minutes, the 40th percentile — his ice went 65-64 against an expectation of 54.68-57.7, so he outscored the chances by ten.
He came back from a fractured femur that ended the season before after 67 games.
The Finesse Game
223 attempts at a median of 28 feet with 30 per cent from inside 20, off a 90.8 mph shot at the 49th percentile. The shot is ordinary and the release is not — 37 goals on that velocity is placement and timing rather than power.
49 assists and 209 for his career says the passing is the better half. He plays the half-wall on the power play and the puck arrives on the tape of a man moving, and 342 points in 442 games at twenty-five is a genuine first-line forward on a club that has had almost none.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 175 pounds, which is small even by the standards of a league that has stopped caring, and the game is built entirely on avoiding contact rather than absorbing it.
The skating is the reason it works: 23.1 mph top end at the 88th percentile and 3.22 miles a game at the 92nd, which for a forward is an enormous workload. He is quick, he never stops, and he is very difficult to line up.
The Intangibles
Seventh overall in 2016, seven seasons, 442 games and 342 points, all of them here, through three general managers and a relocation to a five-thousand-seat college arena.
He is 25 and the captain of a club that has finished in the bottom five for four straight years. The question that will define the next three seasons is whether a player this good can be kept once the rebuild produces somebody to play with him — and Arizona’s history says the answer has usually been no.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:03 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
“He plays the half-wall on the power play and the puck arrives on the tape of a man moving”
“the game is built entirely on avoiding contact rather than absorbing it”
“He is 25 and the captain of a club that has finished in the bottom five for four straight years.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,316 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.7%
- 40th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.1%
- 46th 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: 65 for, 64 against. Expected: 54.7 and 57.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 52 points above where the numbers do. 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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 · 1316 minutes at five-on-five
- Travis Boyd40%
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 48.7% — 3.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,316 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Schmaltz | 53.2% | 40.1% | 29.7% |
| Barrett Hayton | 54.9% | 42.4% | 44.3% |
| Travis Boyd | 41.7% | 53.5% | 41.4% |
53.2% together, 40.1% for him apart and 29.7% for Schmaltz 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
304 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 38 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.