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

Joel Armia

29 points and 3 shorthanded goals at 32, and a penalty killer signed for a unit already 5th.

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

2014-15	BUF	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	14:47
2015-16	WPG	43	4	6	10	+2	12	0	0	1	52	7.7	12:10
2016-17	WPG	57	10	9	19	-8	20	0	4	1	111	9.0	15:08
2017-18	WPG	79	12	17	29	+3	22	0	1	2	128	9.4	12:36
2018-19	MTL	57	13	10	23	0	14	2	1	2	134	9.7	15:48
2019-20	MTL	58	16	14	30	+2	28	3	3	2	155	10.3	17:14
2020-21	MTL	41	7	7	14	+10	10	1	1	0	73	9.6	14:42
2021-22	MTL	60	6	8	14	-15	14	1	1	0	103	5.8	13:43
2022-23	MTL	43	7	7	14	-7	22	0	1	0	69	10.1	14:57
2023-24	MTL	66	17	8	25	+4	34	0	2	3	139	12.2	15:33
2024-25	MTL	81	11	18	29	-2	16	0	3	1	104	10.6	14:18
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	586	103	104	207	-11	192	7	17	12	1068	9.6	14:35

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

11 goals and 18 assists in 81 games for 29 points, minus-2, on 14:18 a night with Montreal, including 3 shorthanded goals.

104 shots and 11 goals at 10.6 per cent. A third-line season on a club that made the playoffs, and the shorthanded work is the most distinctive part of it.

The Finesse Game

Better hands than a checking winger usually has and a long history of not using them enough. He protects the puck well on the wall and can make a play at moderate speed.

29 points is close to his rate across eleven seasons. The shot is decent and the volume is low, and there has never been a scoring season above 30 points.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 215, and he uses the size for possession rather than for contact. He is difficult to knock off a puck and does not initiate.

16 penalty minutes over 81 games is exceptional discipline. The durability was excellent last season after several interrupted ones.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, three organisations, and a career as a defensively reliable third-line winger with occasional flashes of more.

At 32 the projection is 25 points and genuinely good penalty killing. Los Angeles’s kill was 5th in the league and it has added another man who can do it, which is a sensible purchase at the price.

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
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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
33% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“At 32 the projection is 25 points and genuinely good penalty killing.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He protects the puck well on the wall and can make a play at moderate speed.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is difficult to knock off a puck and does not initiate.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-3 and 215, and he uses the size for possession rather than for contact.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“a career as a defensively reliable third-line winger with occasional flashes of more”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 846 minutes

Expected goals: 44.5%; 15th pct
Shot attempts: 46.3%; 20th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 39 against. Expected: 28.5 and 35.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

55th

Numbers

15th

The report ranks him 40 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 — 73 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: 22.4 mph; 56th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.90 a game
Distance: 2.24 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.2 mph; 84th 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 with MTL · 846 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: MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.5% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 846 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jake Evans	45.8%	42.1%	51.5%
Emil Heineman	49.1%	41.2%	45.9%
Mike Matheson	39.8%	46.8%	48.1%

45.8% together, 42.1% for him apart and 51.5% for Evans apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Evans 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

152 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 27% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.