Leo Carlsson

Last Season

Twenty-nine goals and 38 assists in 70 games, plus-four on a club that was outscored by 31. Nineteen minutes a night at 21 years old, and the best five-on-five numbers of any forward here: 54.6 per cent of the expected goals while he was on the ice, which is 85th percentile in the league.

The Finesse Game

Six foot three and he handles the puck like a smaller man, which is the whole trick. He protects it below the dots with his back to pressure and waits — not because he is slow to decide, but because he has learned that a defenceman who has committed cannot uncommit.

The shot is heavier than the goal total suggests and it comes from the right places: the median attempt is 25 feet out, and 39 per cent of them are inside twenty. He is not a perimeter player. He gets to the middle and shoots from there, which is why 29 goals arrived on fewer than 200 shots.

The passing is the part that will decide how high this goes. He already makes the delayed feed to the far post that most centres do not see until their late twenties.

The Physical Game

He is 208 pounds and does not play like it yet. He wins pucks by being hard to knock off balance rather than by hitting anybody, and there are shifts where a heavy defence pair simply outmuscles his line.

The skating is good, not explosive. He arrives, he does not burst.

The Intangibles

Taken second overall in 2023 and brought along carefully, and the club now has its answer. Two hundred and one games in, he has 141 points and the on-ice results to match — the goals went 43-39 in his favour at even strength on a team that lost that battle badly overall.

What is not yet settled is whether he is a first-line centre on a good team or the best player on a mediocre one. The numbers cannot separate those two things yet. Another season at this rate and they will.