This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Dylan Larkin

Sixty-nine points in 71 games at 19:39 a night, with the 29th-fastest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers.

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

2015-16	DET	80	23	22	45	+11	34	4	0	5	221	10.4	16:33
2016-17	DET	80	17	15	32	-28	37	5	1	1	178	9.6	16:09
2017-18	DET	82	16	47	63	-9	61	1	2	4	232	6.9	19:51
2018-19	DET	76	32	41	73	-6	75	7	2	4	287	11.2	21:51
2019-20	DET	71	19	34	53	-21	39	5	0	0	223	8.5	21:15
2020-21	DET	44	9	14	23	-14	34	1	0	0	134	6.7	20:24
2021-22	DET	71	31	38	69	-18	47	6	0	4	212	14.6	19:39
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	504	147	211	358	-85	327	29	5	18	1487	9.9	19:15

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

31 goals and 38 assists in 71 games — 69 points, a minus-18 and 47 penalty minutes at 19:39 a night, the 93rd percentile among forwards and the most on the club.

49.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,076 minutes, the 45th percentile — the best of any Detroit forward who played sixty games. His ice went 57-64 against an expectation of 49.83-51.56 — seven more goals for than the chances promised and twelve more against.

The Finesse Game

2.85 even-strength points per 60 is the 92nd percentile among forwards. Fifty-six of his sixty-nine points came at even strength; 19 per cent came on the power play, the 57th percentile, which for a club’s top centre is unusually low and means the production is real rather than borrowed.

9.11 shots per 60 is the 79th percentile and 31 goals on 212 shots is 14.6 per cent, the 78th — a genuine finishing edge, at the high end of his own career.

48 per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 36th percentile, at a median of 25 feet. He is not a net-front centre; the goals come off the rush.

1.63 takeaways per 60 against 1.81 giveaways — the 51st and 67th percentiles, which is even.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 204.

23.3 mph is the 29th-fastest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, and 10.0 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 88th percentile. He is genuinely one of the quickest men in the league and he gets there often. 9.86 miles per 60 is the 68th percentile — the ground covered is ordinary and the pace over it is not.

3.27 hits per 60 is the 41st percentile and 1.20 blocks the 24th. Forty-seven penalty minutes in seventy-one games, at 0.77 taken per 60, the 64th.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2014, and 504 NHL games at 26 with 358 points and a career minus-85. Seven seasons, all of them in Detroit, and he has finished on the wrong side of even in six of them.

With Lucas Raymond he took 48.5 per cent of the chances over 1,734 attempts. Apart, Larkin is at 52.9 over 270 and Raymond at 46.3 over 450 — fragments both, and the direction favours the older man.

With Filip Hronek behind him he is at 53.5 over 687 attempts and 46.6 without; with Moritz Seider he is at 45.4 over 894 and 52.1 without. Seven points either way, from which defenceman is on the ice, and the pair the club celebrated is the one that costs him.

A 26-year-old top-line centre who scores at a point a game on a club that finished 25th is the most valuable and the most exposed asset Detroit has, and nothing in the repo says how many more seasons like this he is prepared to spend.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
6 of his 31 goals late or in overtime, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:09 a game at five-on-five, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“He is genuinely one of the quickest men in the league and he gets there often.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is not a net-front centre; the goals come off the rush.”
leadershippresent and ordinary· the room, and who holds it
“nothing in the repo says how many more seasons like this he is prepared to spend”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,076 minutes

Expected goals: 49.1%; 49th pct
Shot attempts: 49.4%; 49th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 57 for, 64 against. Expected: 49.8 and 51.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

93rd

Numbers

49th

The report ranks him 44 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 649 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 71 games

Top speed: 23.3 mph; 95th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.27 a game
Distance: 3.23 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.3 mph; 73rd 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

2021-22 · 1076 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, 2021-22

The club: DET took 45.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 3.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,076 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Lucas Raymond	48.5%	52.9%	46.3%
Tyler Bertuzzi	51.5%	46.9%	47.8%
Moritz Seider	45.4%	52.1%	45.3%

48.5% together, 52.9% for him apart and 46.3% for Raymond apart. He was better away from Raymond, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Raymond.

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

279 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 32 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.