Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

9

Clayton Keller

Utah Mammoth Right Wing

90 points and a minus-12, and the ice he was on scored 25 goals at five-on-five against an expectation of 48.59.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17ARI3022-30000012:40
2017-18ARI82234265-72460321210.818:05
2018-19ARI82143347-21241052007.018:14
2019-20ARI70172744-6282021849.216:18
2020-21ARI56142135-51840312411.316:40
2021-22ARI67283563+32851217715.820:08
2022-23ARI82374986-24961422316.620:45
2023-24ARI78334376-203290422814.519:15
2024-25UTA81306090-1228100521813.819:07
2025-26 so far
Career601196312508-7323143228156612.518:37

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

30 goals and 60 assists in 81 games — 90 points, a career high, at 19:07 a night, with 10 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 218 shots. Minus-12.

52.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 74th percentile. His ice went 25-38 against an expectation of 48.59-44.36. Twenty-four goals of scoring did not arrive on the ice of a man who produced ninety points, which is the largest such gap of any forward in this edition.

The Finesse Game

218 attempts at a median of 28 feet with 34 per cent from inside 20, converting at 13.8 per cent.

60 assists is the number and the passing is genuinely elite. He carries the puck through the neutral zone at speed and gives it up a beat before a defenceman can commit, and on a club that was 3rd in the league at creating chances he is most of the reason.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 175 pounds and among the lightest forwards in the league. He does not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall and he does not forecheck with force.

28 penalty minutes in 81 games. He takes contact to make a play and does not answer it, and at this size on this roster that is the only available arrangement.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2016 and 601 games and 508 points, all of it in the same organisation across three cities and two names.

He is 27, he is the captain, and he was the first player the club named one in Utah. Ninety points on a team that finished four points out of the playoffs is the season he has been building towards for a decade.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,125 minutes

Expected goals
52.3%
74th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.4%
86th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 38 against. Expected: 48.6 and 44.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
84th
Numbers
74th

The two rank him within 10 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 79 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 · 1125 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
UTA took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.3% — 0.9 below the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,125 minutes at five-on-five — 79th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nick Schmaltz53.3%48.6%50.8%
Mikhail Sergachev53.9%51.1%51.4%
Logan Cooley49.6%54.0%46.1%

53.3% together, 48.6% for him apart and 50.8% for Schmaltz apart. He was worse away from Schmaltz, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Schmaltz did.

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

326 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.