Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Dylan Larkin

Photo by OSPORT.TV, CC BY 2.5

Dylan Larkin

Detroit Red Wings Center #71

34 goals, the captaincy, and 808 games in one uniform.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16DET80232245+113440522110.416:33
2016-17DET80171532-28375111789.616:09
2017-18DET82164763-9611242326.919:51
2018-19DET76324173-67572428711.221:51
2019-20DET71193453-21395002238.521:15
2020-21DET4491423-14341001346.720:24
2021-22DET71313869-184760421214.619:39
2022-23DET80324779-745161524413.119:33
2023-24DET68333669+539142522114.920:10
2024-25DET82304070-1640130323412.820:04
2025-26DET74343367+348141922914.820:11
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—808276367643-10049986940241511.419:32

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

34 goals and 33 assists in 74 games — 67 points, plus-3, at 20:11 a night with 14 power-play goals. 229 shots on goal.

The Finesse Game

Still one of the faster centres in the league at 30, and the speed is what makes the shot work — he arrives at the top of the circle a half-step before the defenceman can close, and the release is quick enough to punish that.

346 unblocked attempts, 33 goals, 42 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 23. He goes to the ice where goals are, which is why the goal total has climbed as the rest of his game has stayed flat.

33 assists is what the playmaking gives you and it has never been more.

The Physical Game

6-1, 204, and he plays harder than his frame suggests. 48 penalty minutes. He takes faceoffs, kills penalties on the seventh-ranked unit in the league, and does not avoid the hard ice.

The Intangibles

48.9 per cent of the expected goals, 45th percentile, in 1,000 minutes of the hardest assignment on the club.

11 points in his last 10, 5 of them goals. He is 30, the captain, and 643 points into a career spent entirely in Detroit through the worst stretch in the franchise’s modern history.

276 goals and no playoff games. That is the whole of it, and this is the roster that has to change it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,050 minutes

Expected goals
48.9%
45th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.4%
63rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 42 against. Expected: 43.6 and 45.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
92nd
Numbers
45th

The report ranks him 47 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 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, 2025-26 · 74 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
65th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
2.51 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
3.28 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.7 mph
89th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

11

points in his last 10 games — 5 goals, 6 assists, 33 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1050 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, 2025-26

The club
DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,050 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Lucas Raymond51.3%41.5%46.4%
Emmitt Finnie48.6%49.3%49.9%
Moritz Seider51.6%46.3%57.8%

51.3% together, 41.5% for him apart and 46.4% for Raymond 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

346 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 33 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.