Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

71

Dylan Larkin

Detroit Red Wings Center

Thirty-three goals and fourteen on the power play in sixty-eight games, from a Michigan captain with a career minus-87.

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
2024-25 so far
Career652212294506-8741159828195210.919:23

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

Sixty-eight games, 33 goals and 36 assists for 69 points, 14 on the power play and 2 shorthanded, 20:10 a night and plus-5. He converted 14.93 per cent of 221 shots against a career 10.86 across 1,952.

He took 50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 977 minutes, the 59th percentile, and his ice went 44-43 against an expectation of 42.31-40.77. On a club that took 46.0 per cent of the shot attempts, a first-line centre at 50.9 is doing real work.

The Finesse Game

He skates as well as any centre in the league. The first three strides are the fastest thing on this roster and the entries are made by beating a defenceman outright rather than by passing to get past him.

Two hundred and twenty-one shots in 68 games from a median of 26 feet with 38 per cent from inside 20. A career 10.86 per cent across 1,952 shots says the 14.93 was a shooting season rather than a new level, and 212 goals in 652 games says the volume is the durable part.

Two hundred and ninety-four career assists. The passing is good and the shot is the first option.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 204 and he forechecks hard, and 411 penalty minutes in 652 games is a high rate for a first-line centre.

He goes to the front of the net and takes what comes with it, and he answers for teammates more often than a club’s best player usually does. He is not big enough to win the wall against heavy defencemen.

The Intangibles

The 15th pick in 2014 out of Waterford, Michigan, nine seasons in one organisation, 652 games and the captaincy of the club he grew up watching.

A career minus-87 across 652 games is the whole of Detroit’s decade and none of it is his. He is 28 and has played every one of those games for a club that has not made the playoffs.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 977 minutes

Expected goals
50.9%
60th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.7%
70th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 43 against. Expected: 42.3 and 40.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
91st
Numbers
60th

The report ranks him 31 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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

2023-24 · 977 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, 2023-24

The club
DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 977 minutes at five-on-five — 55th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Lucas Raymond51.4%50.0%45.0%
Alex DeBrincat52.5%48.9%44.8%
Moritz Seider46.8%54.2%41.8%

51.4% together, 50.0% for him apart and 45.0% for Raymond apart. Raymond was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Raymond than for him.

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

304 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.