Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

71

Luke Kunin

San Jose Sharks Center

The lowest chance share of anybody in this edition who played a thousand minutes at five-on-five.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18MIN19224-313010326.312:59
2018-19MIN4961117-927001886.815:53
2019-20MIN63151631-105501112811.715:28
2020-21NSH3810919+3130027114.113:59
2021-22NSH8213922-119900012510.413:50
2022-23SJS315813-942200588.615:26
2023-24SJS7711718-30832019811.215:44
2024-25 so far
Career3596262124-6933242560010.314:55

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

77 games, 11 goals and 7 assists for 18 points, 2 on the power play, 83 penalty minutes, 15:44 a night and minus-30, with 1 game-winner. He took 36.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,002 minutes — the lowest share of anybody in this edition who played a thousand minutes — and his ice went 20-47 against an expectation of 29.60-52.00.

Ten goals of finishing below what the chances were worth, and the chances were the worst anybody in this edition took. Twenty goals for in a thousand minutes of five-on-five hockey is very hard to do.

The Finesse Game

147 attempts at a median of 24 feet with 40 per cent of them from inside twenty, 98 of those on goal, converted at 11.2 per cent against a career 10.33 across 600 shots.

Sixty-two career goals and 62 assists in 359 games. He scores from the net front and from nowhere else; there is no creation in his game and a career 10.33 per cent across 600 shots is the whole of the finishing.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 197 and took 83 penalty minutes.

332 career penalty minutes in 359 games is close to one a game. He hits everything, fights when asked, and gets caught reaching when the puck has already gone past him; a fair share of those minutes are the second infraction rather than the first.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2016 by Minnesota, seven seasons, three organisations, and 124 points in 359 games.

A career minus-69 in 359 games. He was a top-fifteen pick who has become a fourth-line centre taking the hardest minutes on bad clubs, and the 36.3 per cent is what happens when that assignment has no help behind it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,002 minutes

Expected goals
36.3%
1st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
40.5%
2nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 20 for, 47 against. Expected: 29.6 and 52.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
62nd
Numbers
1st

The report ranks him 61 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1002 minutes at five-on-five

  • Filip Zadinaoff the roster25%
  • Mike Hoffmanoff the roster18%

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
SJS took 40.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 36.3% — 4.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,002 minutes at five-on-five — 58th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
William Eklund39.5%34.4%44.8%
Mario Ferraro40.4%34.3%44.1%
Kyle Burroughs41.9%33.9%44.5%

39.5% together, 34.4% for him apart and 44.8% for Eklund apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Eklund and did not follow him.

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 2023-24, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.