Patrik Laine

20 goals in 52 games and 15 of them on the power play, which is the most lopsided line in this edition.

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

2016-17	WPG	73	36	28	64	+7	26	9	0	5	204	17.6	17:55
2017-18	WPG	82	44	26	70	+8	24	20	0	8	241	18.3	16:29
2018-19	WPG	82	30	20	50	-24	42	15	0	3	245	12.2	17:14
2019-20	WPG	68	28	35	63	+8	22	8	0	1	226	12.4	19:25
2020-21	WPG/CBJ	46	12	12	24	-28	25	4	0	1	82	14.6	17:27
2021-22	CBJ	56	26	30	56	-7	24	5	0	7	167	15.6	18:50
2022-23	CBJ	55	22	30	52	-12	16	8	0	1	184	12.0	19:07
2023-24	CBJ	18	6	3	9	-10	6	1	0	0	41	14.6	15:13
2024-25	MTL	52	20	13	33	-14	14	15	0	5	116	17.2	14:18
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	532	224	197	421	-72	199	85	0	31	1506	14.9	17:31

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

20 goals and 13 assists in 52 games for 33 points, minus-14, on 14:18 a night — and 15 of the 20 goals came on the power play.

43.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 11th percentile, over 530 minutes. At five-on-five he scored 5 goals in 52 games. 17.2 per cent shooting overall, with only 11 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet and 30 per cent from beyond 40.

The Finesse Game

The shot is one of the two or three best in the league and it always has been. It is heavy, it is released without a windup, and from the left circle on a power play it is close to unstoppable — 15 power-play goals in 52 games is the highest rate in this edition.

Everything else has thinned. 13 assists says there is no playmaking, the puck-handling under pressure is ordinary, and a shot chart with 11 per cent of attempts inside 20 feet is a man who never goes to the net. At five-on-five he is a passenger.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 208, and he does not use it at all. He does not forecheck, does not win pucks on the wall, and does not go to the net front.

14 penalty minutes over 52 games. The body has cost him repeatedly — he has cleared 60 games twice in five seasons — and he entered the player assistance programme in 2024, which is a health matter and not a character one.

The Intangibles

A 2nd overall pick, 200 goals before turning 26, and a career that has never had two settled seasons in a row.

At 27 the projection is exactly what happened: 20 goals, most of them on a power play, and a five-on-five liability. Montreal’s power play was 26th in the league with him on it, which is the more troubling fact.

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
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
29.8% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
72% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“13 assists says there is no playmaking, the puck-handling under pressure is ordinary, and a shot chart with 11 per cent of attempts inside 20 feet is a man who never goes to the net.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He does not forecheck, does not win pucks on the wall, and does not go to the net front.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck, does not win pucks on the wall, and does not go to the net front.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck, does not win pucks on the wall, and does not go to the net front.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-4 and 208, and he does not use it at all.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 530 minutes

Expected goals: 43.6%; 11th pct
Shot attempts: 41.3%; 2nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 17 for, 25 against. Expected: 19.8 and 25.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

13th

Numbers

11th

The 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 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 · 52 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 30th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.79 a game
Distance: 2.25 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.7 mph; 82nd 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 · 530 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: MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.6% — 5.0 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 530 minutes at five-on-five — 18th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alex Newhook	45.6%	37.6%	50.5%
Kirby Dach	42.5%	44.6%	50.2%
Lane Hutson	45.8%	42.2%	53.2%

45.6% together, 37.6% for him apart and 50.5% for Newhook apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Newhook 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

168 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 30% from beyond forty.