This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Lars Eller
Pittsburgh Penguins Center
A thousand and thirty-six games, nine career shorthanded goals, and not a single game-winner last season.
| 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 | PIT | 82 | 15 | 16 | 31 | -1 | 32 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 154 | 9.7 | 15:58 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 1036 | 178 | 224 | 402 | -25 | 599 | 17 | 9 | 28 | 1805 | 9.9 | 15:13 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
82 games, 15 goals and 16 assists for 31 points, 4 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 32 penalty minutes, 15:58 a night and minus-1, with no game-winners. He took 50.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 997 minutes, the 58th percentile, and his ice went 33-35 against an expectation of 38.56-37.48.
Six goals of finishing below what the chances were worth. Fifteen goals in 82 games at 35 is the same rate he has produced for a decade, and no game-winners in a full season is the sort of number that only turns up on a club that missed by three points.
The Finesse Game
222 attempts at a median of 29 feet with 32 per cent of them from inside twenty, 152 of those on goal, converted at 9.7 per cent against a career 9.86 across 1,805 shots.
178 career goals and 224 assists in 1,036 games. He shoots from the middle distance and scores at the same rate every year, which is the whole point of him — a third-line centre a club can pencil in for fifteen goals without checking.
The Physical Game
He is 6-2 and 207 and took 32 penalty minutes.
599 career penalty minutes in 1,036 games. He is heavier than he looks, wins the wall on the defensive-zone breakout rather than losing it, and has been taking those minutes in front of his own net for fifteen years.
The Intangibles
Thirteenth overall in 2007 by St. Louis, fifteen seasons, five organisations, and 402 points in 1,036 games.
Nine career shorthanded goals and 1,036 games of the third-line job. He has never played fewer than 69 games in a full season since 2010-11.
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
82 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
26% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He is heavier than he looks, wins the wall on the defensive-zone breakout rather than losing it, and has been taking those minutes in front of his own net for fifteen years.”
“Nine career shorthanded goals and 1,036 games of the third-line job.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 997 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.7%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.2%
- 65th 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: 33 for, 35 against. Expected: 38.6 and 37.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 652 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 64th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.15 a game
- Distance
- 2.60 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.8 mph
- 74th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 997 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, 2023-24
- The club
- PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.7% — 0.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 997 minutes at five-on-five — 57th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Pettersson | 51.3% | 50.4% | 53.9% |
| Erik Karlsson | 54.1% | 48.8% | 54.0% |
| Kris Letang | 46.2% | 53.2% | 50.5% |
51.3% together, 50.4% for him apart and 53.9% for Pettersson apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
222 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.