Ilya Lyubushkin

3rd percentile in shot attempts, and 1 goal in 486 games.

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

2018-19	ARI	41	0	4	4	-9	13	0	0	0	27	0.0	13:44
2019-20	ARI	51	0	4	4	+4	18	0	0	0	41	0.0	14:11
2020-21	ARI	42	1	1	2	-13	10	0	0	0	36	2.8	15:42
2021-22	ARI/TOR	77	2	13	15	-2	51	0	0	0	54	3.7	17:27
2022-23	BUF	68	2	12	14	-2	38	0	1	1	41	4.9	15:01
2023-24	ANA/TOR	74	0	8	8	-11	57	0	0	0	47	0.0	17:07
2024-25	DAL	80	1	13	14	+5	32	0	0	0	51	2.0	17:23
2025-26	DAL	53	1	8	9	+1	40	0	0	0	33	3.0	15:44
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	486	7	63	70	-27	259	0	1	1	330	2.1	16:03

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 8 assists in 53 games — 9 points, plus-1, at 15:44 a night with 40 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Dallas.

The Finesse Game

There is none. 47 unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, 4 per cent from inside 20, and 1 goal. 7 goals in 486 career games.

8 assists in 53 games. He is on the ice to defend and does not touch the puck by choice.

The Physical Game

6-2, 206, and undrafted — a career built entirely on being willing to hit and block. 40 penalty minutes, a genuine physical presence in front of his own net, and he blocks shots at a high rate.

The skating is poor and it is the ceiling on everything else.

The Intangibles

46.4 per cent of the expected goals, 24th percentile, and 42.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 3rd percentile, across 764 minutes — on a club that finished 4th in the league in expected goals against.

That split is the Dallas method taken to its extreme: concede the puck entirely, concede little that is dangerous. It works there because Heiskanen and Lindell are covering the middle. It is not a transferable result.

He is 32, on his sixth organisation, and joins a defence that already has Skjei at the 25th percentile and Perbix at the eleventh. That is 3 of 6 now.

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

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
37% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 764 minutes

Expected goals: 46.4%; 24th pct
Shot attempts: 42.4%; 3rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 23 for, 24 against. Expected: 25.3 and 29.2.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

4th

Numbers

24th

The numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2025-26 · 53 games

Top speed: 20.9 mph; 23rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.09 a game
Distance: 2.15 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.8 mph; 36th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 12 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with DAL · 764 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, 2025-26

The club: DAL took 50.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.4% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: 764 minutes at five-on-five — 35th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Thomas Harley	37.6%	51.6%	50.6%
Jason Robertson	51.0%	44.1%	56.4%
Wyatt Johnston	39.6%	49.7%	53.1%

37.6% together, 51.6% for him apart and 50.6% for Harley apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

47 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.