This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Lars Eller
Ottawa Senators Center
A 36-year-old fourth-line centre with 1,116 games, a Stanley Cup-winning goal, and a specific job.
| 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 | PIT/WSH | 80 | 10 | 12 | 22 | -5 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 104 | 9.6 | 13:18 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 1116 | 188 | 236 | 424 | -30 | 635 | 17 | 9 | 28 | 1909 | 9.8 | 15:05 |
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
10 goals and 12 assists in 80 games across Pittsburgh and Washington — 22 points at 13:18 a night, with 36 penalty minutes.
It is the least productive full season of his career and it is not the reason Ottawa signed him. He was acquired in the summer to take defensive draws and kill penalties on a club that finished 24th at doing the second of those things.
The Finesse Game
104 attempts and 10 goals at a 9.6 per cent conversion. The shot has never been the point and at 36 there is nothing left in it that was not there before.
He wins the draw that starts the shift, which at this stage of his career is the skill he is paid for, and he makes the short correct pass out of his own zone rather than the ambitious one.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 207 and still hard to move in a battle along the wall. He is not fast and has not been for some years, and he compensates by being where the puck is going.
36 penalty minutes in 80 games. He comes back, he is trusted with a lead, and he has been the man a coach sends over the boards to protect one for most of a decade.
The Intangibles
Thirteenth overall in 2007, 1,116 games across five organisations, and the man who scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal for Washington in 2018.
He is 36. Ottawa signed him in the summer for the bottom of the lineup and for the room, on a young club that has now played exactly one playoff series.
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
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He wins the draw that starts the shift, which at this stage of his career is the skill he is paid for, and he makes the short correct pass out of his own zone rather than the ambitious one.”
“He was acquired in the summer to take defensive draws and kill penalties on a club that finished 24th at doing the second of those things.”
“He comes back, he is trusted with a lead, and he has been the man a coach sends over the boards to protect one for most of a decade.”
“6-2 and 207 and still hard to move in a battle along the wall.”
“Ottawa signed him in the summer for the bottom of the lineup and for the room, on a young club that has now played exactly one playoff series.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 906 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.1%
- 46th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.3%
- 76th 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: 28 for, 35 against. Expected: 33.7 and 35.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 59th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.39 a game
- Distance
- 2.15 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.7 mph
- 82nd 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 83.9
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
2024-25 with WSH · 682 minutes at five-on-five
- Ethen Frank25%
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
- WSH took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 906 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Mangiapane | 51.2% | 48.0% | 50.9% |
| Taylor Raddysh | 54.4% | 46.7% | 50.8% |
| Matt Roy | 43.2% | 51.2% | 51.2% |
51.2% together, 48.0% for him apart and 50.9% for Mangiapane apart. He was worse away from Mangiapane, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Mangiapane did.
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
147 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.