This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Leo Carlsson

Nineteen years old, even on the chances, and his ice lost seven goals.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2023-24	ANA	55	12	17	29	-11	16	4	0	0	109	11.0	18:07
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	55	12	17	29	-11	16	4	0	0	109	11.0	18:07

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

12 goals and 17 assists in 55 games — 29 points at 18:07 a night, minus-11, with 4 power-play goals on 109 shots, converting at 11.01 per cent, and 16 penalty minutes. His first NHL season, at 19.

51.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 803 minutes, the 64th percentile — the only regular on this club at even chances. His ice went 27-34 against an expectation of 34.24-32.13.

That is the report in one line. The chances were exactly even and the goals were 27-34. A nineteen-year-old broke even against NHL opposition and was outscored by seven anyway, and almost none of that is his.

The Finesse Game

109 attempts at a median of 26 feet, with 42 per cent from inside 20 and 18 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 11.01 per cent.

The hockey sense is the best on this club and it is not close. He slows the game rather than speeding it up — he holds the puck a half-second past where a defenceman expects and the seam opens because of the delay rather than in spite of it. The passing is a first-line centre’s already.

Twelve goals in fifty-five games at nineteen, from a man who shoots from the middle of the ice rather than from the wall.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 208 at 19, and the body has not arrived yet. He protects the puck better than he wins it, and he will be moved off a wall by a grown defenceman.

16 penalty minutes in 55 games. He does not agitate, he does not retaliate, and there is nothing here to correct — the strength comes on its own.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2023, out of Örebro, and an NHL centre at 18 playing eighteen minutes a night.

Everything about this season is encouraging except the goal column on his ice, and that column belongs to the roster rather than to him. He is the reason this club has a future and he is the one player on it who would be a top-six forward on any team in the league tomorrow.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
51.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 44.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.2, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**The passing is a first-line centre's already.**”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He slows the game rather than speeding it up — he holds the puck a half-second past where a defenceman expects and the seam opens because of the delay rather than in spite of it.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He protects the puck better than he wins it, and he will be moved off a wall by a grown defenceman.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“**6-3 and 208 at 19, and the body has not arrived yet.** He protects the puck better than he wins it, and he will be moved off a wall by a grown defenceman.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He does not agitate, he does not retaliate, and there is nothing here to correct — the strength comes on its own.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not agitate, he does not retaliate, and there is nothing here to correct — the strength comes on its own.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 803 minutes

Expected goals: 51.6%; 65th pct
Shot attempts: 50.8%; 61st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 34 against. Expected: 34.2 and 32.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

76th

Numbers

65th

The two rank him within 11 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 — 75 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 · 55 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 45th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.87 a game
Distance: 3.05 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.9 mph; 51st 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

2023-24 · 803 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: ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.6% — 5.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 803 minutes at five-on-five — 39th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Troy Terry	52.9%	48.5%	41.4%
Alex Killorn	51.8%	51.2%	43.5%
Cam Fowler	46.5%	55.0%	44.0%

52.9% together, 48.5% for him apart and 41.4% for Terry apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

146 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.