This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mikael Granlund

66 points at 33 across two clubs, and the best playmaker this organisation has had in a decade.

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

2012-13	MIN	27	2	6	8	-4	6	0	0	0	36	5.6	13:11
2013-14	MIN	63	8	33	41	-3	22	2	0	2	104	7.7	17:19
2014-15	MIN	68	8	31	39	+17	20	0	0	2	99	8.1	17:54
2015-16	MIN	82	13	31	44	-12	20	2	1	3	160	8.1	18:07
2016-17	MIN	81	26	43	69	+23	12	7	3	4	177	14.7	18:49
2017-18	MIN	77	21	46	67	+13	18	7	1	2	193	10.9	18:47
2018-19	MIN/NSH	79	16	38	54	-8	24	2	2	5	189	8.5	18:21
2019-20	NSH	63	17	13	30	-4	28	4	1	4	130	13.1	17:48
2020-21	NSH	51	13	14	27	-1	14	5	0	1	74	17.6	19:28
2021-22	NSH	80	11	53	64	-9	33	3	0	3	117	9.4	20:25
2022-23	NSH/PIT	79	10	31	41	-15	20	1	0	1	121	8.3	17:49
2023-24	SJS	69	12	48	60	-23	32	1	0	1	134	9.0	20:58
2024-25	SJS/DAL	83	22	44	66	0	28	5	1	4	169	13.0	19:27
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	902	179	431	610	-26	277	39	9	32	1703	10.5	18:37

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

22 goals and 44 assists in 83 games for 66 points between San Jose and Dallas, even, on 19:27 a night — a career high in goals at 33 and the second-best point total of his career.

13 per cent shooting on 169 shots. He was the best forward on a very bad club for half a season and a useful third-line centre on a conference finalist for the other half, which is a fair description of the range.

The Finesse Game

The passing is the whole player and it is very good. He plays a patient, small-area game — hold the puck on the half-wall, wait for a killer or a defenceman to commit, and put it through the space he leaves. 44 assists on those two rosters is a genuine achievement.

The shot is better than it used to be and still secondary; 22 goals is his career high in a fourteen-year career, which places it. He is also one of the better faceoff men in the league, which is why he keeps being played at centre despite being a winger by instinct.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 193, and there is nothing here. He does not win pucks along the wall, does not forecheck with force, and is removed from possessions by NHL defencemen without much difficulty.

28 penalty minutes. He is not reckless and he is not involved; the defensive value is in reading and intercepting, not in taking anything back.

The Intangibles

Fourteen seasons, six organisations, and a reputation as the player a contender adds in March and then does not re-sign. He has been traded at the deadline three times.

Anaheim is the first club in years to want him for a whole season, and at 33 that is a reasonable thing to buy for a team whose problem is that its 21-year-olds have nobody to play with. The risk is the calendar: a 5-10 playmaker whose value is entirely in his hands has a short cliff.

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.

durable· was available
83 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The passing is the whole player and it is very good.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He is also one of the better faceoff men in the league, which is why he keeps being played at centre despite being a winger by instinct.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not win pucks along the wall”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“does not forecheck with force”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“is removed from possessions by NHL defencemen without much difficulty”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,123 minutes

Expected goals: 43.2%; 10th pct
Shot attempts: 44.2%; 9th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 46 against. Expected: 43.8 and 57.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

10th

The report ranks him 50 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 83 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 48th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.25 a game
Distance: 2.97 miles a game
Hardest shot: 85.0 mph; 43rd 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

2024-25 with SJS · 746 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, 2024-25

The club: DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.2% — 7.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,123 minutes at five-on-five — 78th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cody Ceci	40.3%	45.1%	41.2%
Fabian Zetterlund	38.3%	45.6%	48.5%
William Eklund	44.6%	42.7%	52.6%

40.3% together, 45.1% for him apart and 41.2% for Ceci apart. He was better away from Ceci, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Ceci.

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

241 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.