This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Vancouver Canucks Defense
The 11th-fewest blocks of 202 defencemen, and five goals from 168 shots at 22:19 a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | PHX | 48 | 1 | 10 | 11 | +3 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 2.0 | 15:02 |
| 2011-12 | PHX | 82 | 13 | 19 | 32 | 0 | 32 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 147 | 8.8 | 22:07 |
| 2012-13 | PHX | 48 | 3 | 21 | 24 | +5 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 101 | 3.0 | 25:06 |
| 2013-14 | PHX | 80 | 15 | 29 | 44 | -4 | 50 | 8 | 0 | 6 | 199 | 7.5 | 25:54 |
| 2014-15 | ARI | 82 | 23 | 20 | 43 | -18 | 40 | 10 | 1 | 7 | 264 | 8.7 | 25:13 |
| 2015-16 | ARI | 75 | 21 | 34 | 55 | -6 | 96 | 12 | 0 | 8 | 228 | 9.2 | 24:46 |
| 2016-17 | ARI | 79 | 12 | 27 | 39 | -25 | 48 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 145 | 8.3 | 24:37 |
| 2017-18 | ARI | 82 | 14 | 28 | 42 | -28 | 44 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 202 | 6.9 | 23:41 |
| 2018-19 | ARI | 81 | 14 | 30 | 44 | -16 | 52 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 176 | 8.0 | 23:38 |
| 2019-20 | ARI | 66 | 9 | 21 | 30 | -3 | 38 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 135 | 6.7 | 23:01 |
| 2020-21 | ARI | 46 | 3 | 21 | 24 | -17 | 32 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 3.6 | 20:58 |
| 2021-22 | VAN | 79 | 5 | 24 | 29 | +5 | 52 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 168 | 3.0 | 22:19 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 848 | 133 | 284 | 417 | -104 | 534 | 58 | 4 | 32 | 1898 | 7.0 | 23:20 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
79 games, 5 goals and 24 assists at 22:19 a night, plus-5, fifty-two penalty minutes, 168 shots. Three of the five came on the power play. Sixth overall in 2009 by Phoenix, thirteen seasons, 848 games, 417 points.
The Finesse Game
Twenty-two minutes and nineteen seconds a night is the 78th percentile among the 202 defencemen who played forty games — second on the club behind Quinn Hughes.
5.72 shots per 60 is the 79th percentile at 3.0 per cent, the 23rd — five goals from 168 attempts, from a 51-foot median with nine per cent of them from the slot.
0.78 even-strength points per 60 is the 30th percentile and thirty-four per cent of his points came on the power play at the 84th, off 1:45 a night.
49.7 per cent of the expected goals is the 50th percentile and 49.3 per cent of the attempts the 44th, out of 44.0 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 150th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a hard chair, and the shares come out a shade under even, which is a defensible result from it.
His ice went 55-46 against an expectation of 58.88-59.50 — four short in front and thirteen and a half fewer against than the model asked, and the club’s goaltending rated 1st in the league.
The Physical Game
2.69 blocks per 60 is the 11th-fewest of all 202 defencemen at 6-2 and 190 pounds, against 3.57 hits at the 44th percentile.
0.75 penalties drawn per 60 is the 91st percentile against 0.88 taken at the 73rd, and fifty-two penalty minutes came out of seventy-nine games.
The Intangibles
21.3 mph is the 17th percentile among defencemen and 1.0 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 31st, against 8.72 miles per 60 at the 81st.
A lot of ground covered slowly. At 31, on twenty-two minutes a night, that is the shape of a defenceman getting by on position, and nothing here measures gap control or how he defends a rush, which is where the case would have to be made.
His shot is 94.7 mph, the 52nd percentile, and it produced five goals.
He is 31, with 417 points in 848 games across thirteen seasons and a career plus-minus of minus-104. Twenty-two minutes, a hard chair and a level chance share out of it are the case. Five goals from 168 shots, the 11th-fewest blocks at the position and a 17th-percentile top speed are three separate reasons a sixth-overall pick is on his second club.
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
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,431 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.7%
- 55th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.3%
- 48th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 55 for, 46 against. Expected: 58.9 and 59.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2021-22 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 39th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.38 a game
- Distance
- 3.24 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.7 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 · 1431 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Myers70%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- VAN took 49.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.7% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,431 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Myers | 48.0% | 53.6% | 52.3% |
| Conor Garland | 50.0% | 49.6% | 57.6% |
| J.T. Miller | 49.8% | 49.7% | 52.1% |
48.0% together, 53.6% for him apart and 52.3% for Myers apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
228 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.