This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Lars Eller
Pittsburgh Penguins Center
Eighty-four games of the checking-centre job, at the eleventh percentile of attacking-zone starts.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-10 | STL | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2 | +2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 25.0 | 10:49 |
| 2010-11 | MTL | 77 | 7 | 10 | 17 | -4 | 48 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 79 | 8.9 | 11:08 |
| 2011-12 | MTL | 79 | 16 | 12 | 28 | -5 | 66 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 129 | 12.4 | 15:19 |
| 2012-13 | MTL | 46 | 8 | 22 | 30 | +8 | 45 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 84 | 9.5 | 14:50 |
| 2013-14 | MTL | 77 | 12 | 14 | 26 | -15 | 68 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 137 | 8.8 | 15:58 |
| 2014-15 | MTL | 77 | 15 | 12 | 27 | -6 | 42 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 150 | 10.0 | 15:30 |
| 2015-16 | MTL | 79 | 13 | 13 | 26 | -13 | 28 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 149 | 8.7 | 15:15 |
| 2016-17 | WSH | 81 | 12 | 13 | 25 | +15 | 36 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 115 | 10.4 | 13:54 |
| 2017-18 | WSH | 81 | 18 | 20 | 38 | -6 | 38 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 161 | 11.2 | 15:18 |
| 2018-19 | WSH | 81 | 13 | 23 | 36 | -1 | 37 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 163 | 8.0 | 16:32 |
| 2019-20 | WSH | 69 | 16 | 23 | 39 | +3 | 48 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 151 | 10.6 | 17:01 |
| 2020-21 | WSH | 44 | 8 | 15 | 23 | -1 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 69 | 11.6 | 16:21 |
| 2021-22 | WSH | 72 | 13 | 18 | 31 | -4 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 116 | 11.2 | 16:07 |
| 2022-23 | WSH/COL | 84 | 10 | 13 | 23 | +3 | 46 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 140 | 7.1 | 14:47 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 954 | 163 | 208 | 371 | -24 | 567 | 13 | 8 | 28 | 1651 | 9.9 | 15:09 |
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
10 goals and 13 assists in 84 games — 23 points — at 14:47 a night between Washington and Colorado. Plus-3, 140 shots at 7.1 per cent, one shorthanded, 46 penalty minutes.
52.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,065 minutes, the 63rd percentile, with his ice at 35-36 against an expectation of 42.01-38.40 — seven goals short at the good end.
He started 39 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 11th percentile. That is the assignment: he is sent out to start in his own end and the coach does not much care what happens at the other one.
23 points is the lowest full-season total of his career since 2010-11.
The Finesse Game
140 shots at a median of 30 feet. Inside twenty: 38 shots on goal and five goals, 13.16 per cent against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 61 shots and four goals, 6.56 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 34 shots and one goal.
Below the rate at all three distances, which at 14:47 a night in the defensive end is closer to the job description than to a failure. He is on the ice to end shifts, and the shots he gets are the ones that come to him going the other way.
191 tracked attempts, 111 of them wrist shots and only 13 slap. 92.1 mph at the 60th percentile.
The faceoff work is the reason he has the job. A checking centre who starts four shifts in ten in his own zone is being asked to win the draw first and everything else second, and he has been given that assignment by five different coaches across fourteen seasons.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 207 pounds. Top speed 22.5 mph at the 63rd percentile with 1.0 bursts above twenty a game at the 52nd, and 2.35 miles a game at the 34th.
That is an unremarkable tracking line and it fits the role: short shifts, no long recoveries, nothing that requires a race down the wall.
46 penalty minutes and 567 in 954 career games. He plays a heavy defensive game below the dots and takes the penalties that come from finishing checks a half-second late.
He kills penalties, has eight career shorthanded goals, and has been on the first unit at every club he has played for.
The Intangibles
Thirteenth overall in 2007, fourteen seasons, 954 games, 371 points, and a Stanley Cup with Washington in 2018.
The pattern is a third-line centre of unusual durability: he has played seventy or more games in ten of his fourteen seasons and eighty or more in four of them.
163 goals and 208 assists is a modest career line, and it undersells the file. What a club gets is 84 games, a defensive assignment taken without complaint, a functional record in it, and the ten to fifteen goals that come with it.
He is thirty-four, joining a club that has three forwards over thirty-five. Pittsburgh did not sign him for the points.
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.
- durable· was available
84 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“A checking centre who starts four shifts in ten in his own zone is being asked to win the draw first and everything else second, and he has been given that assignment by five different coaches across fourteen seasons.”
“He kills penalties, has eight career shorthanded goals, and has been on the first unit at every club he has played for.”
“He plays a heavy defensive game below the dots and takes the penalties that come from finishing checks a half-second late.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,065 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.2%
- 68th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.5%
- 66th 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: 35 for, 36 against. Expected: 42.0 and 38.4.
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 638 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, 2022-23 · 84 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 68th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.95 a game
- Distance
- 2.35 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.1 mph
- 79th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 with WSH · 770 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, 2022-23
- The club
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.2% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,065 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Jensen | 52.7% | 52.1% | 49.3% |
| Marcus Johansson | 55.4% | 50.9% | 50.4% |
| Anthony Mantha | 53.5% | 51.8% | 52.4% |
52.7% together, 52.1% for him apart and 49.3% for Jensen apart. Jensen was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Jensen 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
184 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 27% from beyond forty.