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

Conor Garland

One hundred and sixty-five pounds, 50 points, and the ice he was on outscored its expectation by seven.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2018-19	ARI	47	13	5	18	+1	12	4	0	2	118	11.0	12:47
2019-20	ARI	68	22	17	39	+1	20	4	0	5	158	13.9	14:09
2020-21	ARI	49	12	27	39	-3	26	3	0	1	135	8.9	17:55
2021-22	VAN	77	19	33	52	+18	36	1	0	3	203	9.4	16:24
2022-23	VAN	81	17	29	46	-5	31	2	0	2	167	10.2	15:07
2023-24	VAN	82	20	27	47	+19	35	1	0	3	200	10.0	14:32
2024-25	VAN	81	19	31	50	-13	52	7	0	4	171	11.1	18:39
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	485	122	169	291	+18	212	22	0	20	1152	10.6	15:44

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

19 goals and 31 assists in 81 games — 50 points at 18:39 a night, minus-13, with 7 power-play goals, 4 game-winners and 52 penalty minutes on 171 shots.

52.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 82nd percentile. His ice went 29-33 against an expectation of 39.81-35.57 — seven goals better than expected for and seven fewer conceded, which is the best two-way record of any forward on the roster.

The Finesse Game

171 attempts at a median of 29 feet with 31 per cent from inside 20, converting at 11.1 per cent.

The puck protection is the skill and it is remarkable at his size. He holds it below the goal line against defencemen sixty pounds heavier, he does not panic under pressure, and 31 assists says what comes out the other end.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 165 pounds — among the lightest players in the league. He forechecks first, he goes into the corners against men who should be able to remove him, and he is not removed.

52 penalty minutes in 81 games is a high rate for a player this size and a good deal of it is the answer to something. He is an irritant by trade and he has been for a decade.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick in 2015 who was told his whole career he was too small — 485 games and 291 points.

He is 29 and signed an extension in 2025. On a club whose top six is expensive and slow, he is the cheapest thing on it and among the most productive.

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

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
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“**The puck protection is the skill and it is remarkable at his size.** He holds it below the goal line against defencemen sixty pounds heavier, he does not panic under pressure, and 31 assists says what comes out the other end.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“he does not panic under pressure, and 31 assists says what comes out the other end.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks first, he goes into the corners against men who should be able to remove him, and he is not removed.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He forechecks first, he goes into the corners against men who should be able to remove him, and he is not removed.”
agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He is an irritant by trade and he has been for a decade.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“**52 penalty minutes in 81 games** is a high rate for a player this size and a good deal of it is the answer to something.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,083 minutes

Expected goals: 52.8%; 76th pct
Shot attempts: 50.4%; 57th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 33 against. Expected: 39.8 and 35.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

80th

Numbers

76th

The two rank him within 4 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 — 78 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, 2024-25 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.75 a game
Distance: 3.07 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.2 mph; 74th pct

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

2024-25 · 1083 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: VAN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.8% — 3.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,083 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Pius Suter	50.6%	54.4%	49.4%
Tyler Myers	54.4%	51.9%	48.4%
Quinn Hughes	60.4%	48.5%	52.0%

50.6% together, 54.4% for him apart and 49.4% for Suter apart. He was better away from Suter, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Suter.

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

268 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.