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

Dylan Larkin

70 points and 234 shots at 29, and a minus-16 as the captain of a club that has missed nine straight playoffs.

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	DET	80	32	47	79	-7	45	16	1	5	244	13.1	19:33
2023-24	DET	68	33	36	69	+5	39	14	2	5	221	14.9	20:10
2024-25	DET	82	30	40	70	-16	40	13	0	3	234	12.8	20:04
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	734	242	334	576	-103	451	72	8	31	2186	11.1	19:28

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

30 goals and 40 assists in 82 games for 70 points, minus-16, on 20:04 a night with 13 on the power play and 234 shots.

52.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 74th percentile. His on-ice goals were 46-49 against an expected 49-44 — three goals of finishing removed from a line that was creating more than it allowed, and five more conceded than it should have been.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely elite and it is what everything runs on. He enters the zone with speed and control, which is the rarest thing a centre can do, and at 29 there is no sign of it thinning.

234 shots is a very high volume and 40 per cent of them come from inside 20 feet — he drives to the net rather than settling. The passing is good without being the strength; 40 assists is a fair return.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 204, and he plays hard for a skill centre. He forechecks with force, wins pucks below the goal line, and takes the hardest defensive-zone draws.

40 penalty minutes over 82 games. The durability has improved — two consecutive full seasons after a run of interruptions.

The Intangibles

The captain, eleven seasons in one organisation, and nine of them without playoff hockey. He has been open about how much that weighs.

At 29 he is a genuine first-line centre on a club that has not built a contender around him. The question the next three years answer is whether the rebuild arrives before the skating goes.

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
52.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 46.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.4, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He enters the zone with speed and control, which is the rarest thing a centre can do, and at 29 there is no sign of it thinning.”
playmakerpresent and ordinary· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The passing is good without being the strength; 40 assists is a fair return.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks with force, wins pucks below the goal line, and takes the hardest defensive-zone draws.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks with force, wins pucks below the goal line, and takes the hardest defensive-zone draws.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He forechecks with force, wins pucks below the goal line, and takes the hardest defensive-zone draws.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“The captain, eleven seasons in one organisation, and nine of them without playoff hockey. He has been open about how much that weighs.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,144 minutes

Expected goals: 52.6%; 74th pct
Shot attempts: 52.2%; 75th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 49 against. Expected: 49.3 and 44.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

96th

Numbers

74th

The report ranks him 22 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 76th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.85 a game
Distance: 3.34 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.5 mph; 86th 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 · 1144 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: DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.6% — 4.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,144 minutes at five-on-five — 81st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Lucas Raymond	53.9%	47.8%	49.6%
Moritz Seider	52.8%	52.3%	48.3%
Ben Chiarot	50.6%	54.0%	42.0%

53.9% together, 47.8% for him apart and 49.6% 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

337 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 32 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.