Eeli Tolvanen

23 goals on 137 shots at fourteen minutes a night, and the worst on-ice goals-against gap among the club's forwards.

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

2017-18	NSH	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	12:07
2018-19	NSH	4	1	1	2	+2	0	0	0	0	2	50.0	13:16
2020-21	NSH	40	11	11	22	-10	4	6	0	4	65	16.9	14:48
2021-22	NSH	75	11	12	23	-7	16	1	0	1	151	7.3	13:26
2022-23	NSH/SEA	61	18	13	31	+8	14	4	0	4	116	15.5	14:31
2023-24	SEA	81	16	25	41	-15	24	1	0	3	153	10.5	15:39
2024-25	SEA	81	23	12	35	+3	23	2	0	3	137	16.8	14:19
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	345	80	74	154	-19	81	14	0	15	627	12.8	14:30

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

23 goals and 12 assists in 81 games — 35 points at 14:19 a night, plus-3, with 3 game-winners on 137 shots.

46.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 18th percentile. His ice went 41-36 against an expectation of 35.58-40.65 — six goals better than expected for and ten worse against, which is the largest defensive gap of any forward on the club.

The Finesse Game

137 attempts at a median of 33 feet with 30 per cent from inside 20 and 30 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 16.8 per cent — the third-highest rate on the roster.

The shot is the whole player and it is a good one: a quick, heavy release from the top of the circle that does not need much time. 12 assists in 81 games is the other half of the sentence, and it is why he plays fourteen minutes rather than eighteen.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 182 and he plays honestly without being physical. He forechecks and he does not finish many checks, and he will not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall.

23 penalty minutes in 81 games. He is disciplined and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

Thirtieth overall in 2017 and a player Nashville gave up on entirely — he was placed on waivers in 2022 and Seattle claimed him.

345 games and 154 points, and 23, 16 and 23 goals in three seasons since the claim. He is 26 and the waiver claim is among the best pieces of business this organisation has done.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
31.0% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**12 assists in 81 games** is the other half of the sentence, and it is why he plays fourteen minutes rather than eighteen.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks and he does not finish many checks, and he will not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He is disciplined and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,000 minutes

Expected goals: 46.7%; 25th pct
Shot attempts: 47%; 25th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 41 for, 36 against. Expected: 35.6 and 40.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

36th

Numbers

25th

The two rank him within 11 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 — 70 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 · 81 games

Top speed: 21.6 mph; 22nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.48 a game
Distance: 2.32 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.6 mph; 95th 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 · 1000 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: SEA took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.7% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,000 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Shane Wright	46.6%	46.8%	45.9%
Oliver Bjorkstrand	49.5%	45.1%	50.1%
Adam Larsson	42.8%	49.1%	48.0%

46.6% together, 46.8% for him apart and 45.9% for Wright apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

210 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 30% from beyond forty.