This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Elias Lindholm
Calgary Flames Center
Sixty-four points and ten power-play goals, on a club that was second in the league in shot attempts and missed the playoffs.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | CAR | 58 | 9 | 12 | 21 | -14 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 70 | 12.9 | 14:32 |
| 2014-15 | CAR | 81 | 17 | 22 | 39 | -23 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 170 | 10.0 | 16:25 |
| 2015-16 | CAR | 82 | 11 | 28 | 39 | -23 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 176 | 6.3 | 18:07 |
| 2016-17 | CAR | 72 | 11 | 34 | 45 | -2 | 16 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 151 | 7.3 | 18:11 |
| 2017-18 | CAR | 81 | 16 | 28 | 44 | -8 | 18 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 153 | 10.5 | 17:54 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 81 | 27 | 51 | 78 | +30 | 20 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 182 | 14.8 | 20:02 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 70 | 29 | 25 | 54 | -8 | 22 | 8 | 0 | 7 | 169 | 17.2 | 19:43 |
| 2020-21 | CGY | 56 | 19 | 28 | 47 | +10 | 22 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 130 | 14.6 | 19:54 |
| 2021-22 | CGY | 82 | 42 | 40 | 82 | +61 | 22 | 10 | 1 | 9 | 235 | 17.9 | 19:57 |
| 2022-23 | CGY | 80 | 22 | 42 | 64 | +6 | 14 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 186 | 11.8 | 18:39 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 743 | 203 | 310 | 513 | +29 | 176 | 61 | 4 | 40 | 1622 | 12.5 | 18:23 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
22 goals and 42 assists in 80 games — 64 points at 18:39 a night, plus-6, with 10 power-play goals and a shorthanded goal on 186 shots, converting at 11.83 per cent, and only 14 penalty minutes.
55.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,021 minutes, the 87th percentile. His ice went 52-46 against an expectation of 48.26-39.03 — seven more goals conceded than the chances predicted, which on this club is the goaltending and appears in almost every file here.
It followed a 42-goal, 82-point season, so this was a considerable step down in goals.
The Finesse Game
186 attempts at a median of 25 feet, 38 per cent from inside 20 and 18 per cent from beyond 40, off a 91.7 mph shot at the 57th percentile.
203 goals and 513 points in 743 games, and he has done it as a winger and as a centre without either looking like an accommodation. Ten power-play goals from the goal line and the slot is a specialist’s number.
He is the most complete forward on the roster: he takes the hard faceoffs, he kills penalties, and he plays the first power-play unit.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 200 and he is not physical — 176 penalty minutes in 743 games is very light — but he is difficult to take a puck from and he defends properly.
The skating is fine at 22.5 mph, the 62nd percentile, with 2.97 miles a game at the 79th. He works the whole shift and he is not going to beat anybody with speed, which is why the value is in the reading rather than the tools.
The Intangibles
Fifth overall in 2013 to Carolina, and he arrived in the Dougie Hamilton trade, which Calgary won.
He is 28 and in the last year of his contract on a club that has just missed the playoffs with the second-best shot-attempt share in the league. A Selke-calibre centre who can play the wing and score forty is the most valuable trade asset in the NHL at a deadline, and Calgary’s decision on him will define the next five years here.
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
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.17 penalty minutes a game over 80, 8th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“he takes the hard faceoffs, he kills penalties, and he plays the first power-play unit”
“he takes the hard faceoffs, he kills penalties, and he plays the first power-play unit”
“he is difficult to take a puck from and he defends properly”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,021 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.3%
- 88th pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.1%
- 93rd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 52 for, 46 against. Expected: 48.3 and 39.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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
2022-23 · 1021 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Toffolinow NJD84%
- Dillon Dube41%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.3% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,021 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Toffoli | 58.3% | 36.7% | 62.0% |
| Dillon Dube | 50.8% | 58.6% | 49.6% |
| Noah Hanifin | 51.8% | 57.9% | 55.8% |
58.3% together, 36.7% for him apart and 62.0% for Toffoli apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Toffoli and did not follow 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
264 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.