Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

81

Dakota Joshua

Toronto Maple Leafs Center

Fourteen points in 57 games in the season after testicular cancer surgery.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21STL12101-37000911.18:58
2021-22STL30358+616002319.78:30
2022-23VAN79111223-16601127115.511:31
2023-24VAN63181432+19601058421.414:23
2024-25VAN577714-13381105213.512:58
2025-26 so far
Career241403878-718132924716.212:06

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

7 goals and 7 assists in 57 games for Vancouver — 14 points at 12:58 a night, minus-13, with a shorthanded goal and 38 penalty minutes.

He was diagnosed with testicular cancer in the summer of 2024, had surgery, and missed the first month of the season. The year before he scored 18 goals and had 32 points. There is no useful way to read the decline as a hockey question.

The Finesse Game

52 attempts and 7 goals at 13.5 per cent in 57 games. The shot is real and the volume was not there.

7 assists in 57 games. He is not a creator; he is a forechecker who scores from the paint, and 78 points in 241 NHL games is the honest ceiling.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 218 and among the harder forecheckers in the league. He hits everything, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he is not moved from the front of a net.

38 penalty minutes in 57 games is a high rate. He plays with a genuine edge, he goes into the scrum, and he draws the response.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick of Toronto in 2014 who never signed here, went to college, and reached the NHL at 25 with St. Louis — 241 games and 78 points.

He is 29 and Toronto acquired him from Vancouver in the summer, eleven years after drafting him. On a club that has been called soft for a decade, the fit is not subtle.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 629 minutes

Expected goals
49.7%
50th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.1%
18th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 28 against. Expected: 24.3 and 24.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
55th
Numbers
50th

The two rank him within 5 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 — 73 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 with VAN · 629 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 49.7% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 629 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Conor Garland52.8%45.9%53.8%
Pius Suter51.8%48.3%48.6%
Tyler Myers54.7%46.9%48.1%

52.8% together, 45.9% for him apart and 53.8% for Garland apart. He was worse away from Garland, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Garland 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

84 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 6 feet. 73% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.