This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Florida Panthers Defense
Sixth overall in 2009, 902 games, and a minus-24 in fifty-four before Vancouver moved on from the contract.
| 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 | VAN | 54 | 2 | 20 | 22 | -24 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 2.2 | 20:11 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 902 | 135 | 304 | 439 | -128 | 556 | 58 | 4 | 32 | 1988 | 6.8 | 23:09 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
2 goals and 20 assists in 54 games — 22 points — with Vancouver. Minus-24, 20:11 a night, 90 shots, 22 penalty minutes.
45.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 21st percentile, with his ice at 37-59 against an expectation of 35.33-43.02. The chance share was poor and the goaltending behind him made it worse: sixteen goals more than the chances deserved.
Vancouver moved on from the contract in the summer and Florida signed him, which is the shortest way to describe what a market thinks of a thirty-two-year-old defenceman on this record.
Thirteen seasons, 902 games, 439 points.
The Finesse Game
90 shots at a median of 53 feet, 4 per cent from inside twenty and 76 per cent from beyond forty. That is the most perimeter shot distribution on the Florida roster.
Beyond forty: 64 shots on goal, 2 goals. Inside forty: 22 shots and no goals at all.
Two goals in fifty-four games from a defenceman who once scored 23 in a season and 21 in another. The shot has not gone anywhere — 91.9 mph at the 58th percentile — but the places he takes it from have.
Nineteen slap shots in a hundred and twenty-seven tracked attempts. He used to be a point shot; he is now a man who moves the puck along the line.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 190, and 22 penalty minutes in 54 games.
Top speed 21.4 mph, the 11th percentile. Bursts 0.2 a game, the 7th percentile. 2.95 miles a game, the 77th.
That is a great deal of ground covered at close to the slowest measured speed in the league, and on a thirty-two-year-old with 902 games it reads as what it probably is. The distance figure says he is still doing the work. The speed and burst figures say he no longer gets there first.
He was never a physical defenceman and is less so now.
The Intangibles
Sixth overall in 2009 to Phoenix, captain in Arizona, and eleven seasons in a desert where the club was mostly out of the race by February.
46.8 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 32nd percentile — the second-hardest share of any defenceman in this chapter, behind Kulikov.
Florida is asking for a third-pair defenceman who can move a puck on a second unit. On this evidence that is available. What is not available any longer is twenty-two minutes against the other club’s best line, and the minus-24 is what happens when a club asks anyway.
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.
- 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.
“The distance figure says he is still doing the work. The speed and burst figures say he no longer gets there first.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 931 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.1%
- 21st pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.5%
- 34th 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: 37 for, 59 against. Expected: 35.3 and 43.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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, 2022-23 · 54 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 44th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.24 a game
- Distance
- 2.95 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.9 mph
- 51st 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 90.0
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
2022-23 with VAN · 931 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Myers45%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- VAN took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.1% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 931 minutes at five-on-five — 51st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Myers | 43.0% | 47.0% | 45.3% |
| J.T. Miller | 43.8% | 45.7% | 48.7% |
| Bo Horvat | 47.2% | 44.1% | 49.1% |
43.0% together, 47.0% for him apart and 45.3% for Myers apart. He was better away from Myers, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Myers.
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
122 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 61 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.