Linus Karlsson

The 57th percentile on the worst possession club in the West, and 15 goals.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2023-24	VAN	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0.0	10:09
2024-25	VAN	23	3	3	6	+5	6	1	0	1	28	10.7	10:56
2025-26	VAN	79	15	20	35	-28	42	2	0	1	116	12.9	12:31
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	106	18	23	41	-23	48	3	0	2	148	12.2	12:05

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

15 goals and 20 assists in 79 games — 35 points, minus-28, at 12:31 a night with 42 penalty minutes.

41 points in 106 career games.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the best on the club after DeBrusk’s. 180 unblocked attempts with 56 per cent from inside 20 feet and a median of 17, and only 10 per cent from beyond 40.

16 goals from that ice in 12 and a half minutes a night is a strong rate, and it is a career high by some distance.

20 assists is a fair return for the role.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 178 pounds, and light for a player who does his shooting in the crease. 42 penalty minutes in 12 minutes a night is a high rate.

He goes to the interior and takes what comes for it. The skating is ordinary.

The Intangibles

49.1 per cent of the expected goals, 47th percentile, and 50.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 62nd — the best figures of any Vancouver regular — across 869 minutes.

On a club that finished 43.5 per cent in expected goals as a team, 1 forward being above water is worth noticing.

6 points in his last 10, 3 of them goals. He is 26, an 87th overall pick, and the minus-28 on this page describes his club rather than him.

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

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
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
49.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 42.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.1, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 869 minutes

Expected goals: 49.1%; 47th pct
Shot attempts: 50.4%; 63rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 63 against. Expected: 35.5 and 36.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

61st

Numbers

47th

The two rank him within 14 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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, 2025-26 · 79 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 64th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.42 a game
Distance: 1.88 miles a game
Hardest shot: 83.7 mph; 41st 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 3 assists, 20 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 869 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, 2025-26

The club: VAN took 43.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 5.6 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 869 minutes at five-on-five — 44th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Max Sasson	52.6%	46.7%	36.1%
Filip Hronek	51.3%	47.6%	43.4%
Marcus Pettersson	50.7%	48.2%	40.3%

52.6% together, 46.7% for him apart and 36.1% for Sasson 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

180 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.