Photo by Lisa Gansky from New York, NY, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | BUF | 81 | 24 | 32 | 56 | -16 | 22 | 8 | 0 | 5 | 238 | 10.1 | 19:07 |
| 2016-17 | BUF | 61 | 24 | 33 | 57 | -13 | 22 | 10 | 0 | 4 | 249 | 9.6 | 19:55 |
| 2017-18 | BUF | 67 | 25 | 39 | 64 | -25 | 32 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 246 | 10.2 | 20:09 |
| 2018-19 | BUF | 77 | 28 | 54 | 82 | -11 | 26 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 303 | 9.2 | 20:26 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 68 | 36 | 42 | 78 | +5 | 34 | 11 | 1 | 9 | 227 | 15.9 | 22:06 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 21 | 2 | 16 | 18 | -9 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 61 | 3.3 | 20:30 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 34 | 14 | 11 | 25 | +3 | 10 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 133 | 10.5 | 19:24 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 67 | 27 | 39 | 66 | +26 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 223 | 12.1 | 18:46 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 63 | 31 | 37 | 68 | +4 | 27 | 11 | 0 | 7 | 278 | 11.2 | 20:31 |
| 2024-25 | VGK | 77 | 28 | 66 | 94 | +32 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 233 | 12.0 | 20:32 |
| 2025-26 | VGK | 74 | 27 | 63 | 90 | +23 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 260 | 10.4 | 21:12 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 690 | 266 | 432 | 698 | +19 | 211 | 63 | 3 | 45 | 2451 | 10.8 | 20:16 |
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
27 goals and 63 assists in 74 games — 90 points, plus-23, at 21:12 a night with only 18 penalty minutes.
His 690th career game and his 698th point. 432 career assists.
The Finesse Game
The best skater among the league’s front-line centres and it is the foundation of everything — he enters the zone with speed and control at a size that should not permit it, and the defence has to give him something.
The shot chart is a curiosity: 349 unblocked attempts from a median of 32 feet with only 23 per cent from inside 20, and 26 goals. He is scoring from range rather than from the slot, which for a 6-2 centre is a choice rather than a limitation.
63 assists is a top-5 figure in the league.
The Physical Game
6-2, 208, and strong enough to carry through contact. 18 penalty minutes in 74 games is very low.
The neck surgery that ended his time in Buffalo is now 5 years past and has cost him nothing since.
The Intangibles
57.1 per cent of the expected goals, 96th percentile, and 53.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 84th, across 1,131 minutes, with the chances 54.6 to 41.0 in his favour.
16 points in his last 10. He is 29, a Stanley Cup, and the centre of a club that finished 53.4 per cent in expected goals and conceded 22 more actual goals than its chances warranted. Nothing that went wrong in Vegas last season happened while he had the puck.
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.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
7 of his 27 goals late or in overtime, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 51.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.2, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:17 a game at five-on-five, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,131 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.1%
- 96th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.6%
- 84th 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: 66 for, 44 against. Expected: 54.6 and 41.0.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 3 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
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 — 85 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 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 5.00 a game
- Distance
- 3.47 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.6 mph
- 96th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.6
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
16
points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 13 assists, 34 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1112 minutes at five-on-five
- Mark Stone43%
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
- VGK took 53.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.1% — 3.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,131 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ivan Barbashev | 57.2% | 56.7% | 51.8% |
| Shea Theodore | 56.2% | 57.9% | 55.9% |
| Mark Stone | 59.3% | 55.6% | 60.6% |
57.2% together, 56.7% for him apart and 51.8% for Barbashev apart. Barbashev was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Barbashev 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
349 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.