This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Phillip Danault

Twenty-seven goals from a checking centre, off the shortest median shot distance on the club and the best possession share among its forwards.

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

2014-15	CHI	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	9:30
2015-16	CHI/MTL	51	4	6	10	-5	14	0	0	1	72	5.6	12:46
2016-17	MTL	82	13	27	40	+5	35	0	0	3	133	9.8	15:35
2017-18	MTL	52	8	17	25	0	34	0	1	2	94	8.5	16:35
2018-19	MTL	81	12	41	53	+17	39	0	0	1	132	9.1	17:47
2019-20	MTL	71	13	34	47	+18	32	1	0	1	131	9.9	18:51
2020-21	MTL	53	5	19	24	+9	24	0	0	0	73	6.9	16:52
2021-22	LAK	79	27	24	51	+14	38	2	0	5	194	13.9	18:08
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	471	82	168	250	+58	216	3	1	13	831	9.9	16:48

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

Twenty-seven goals in seventy-nine games at 29, from a man whose previous best in eight seasons and 471 games was thirteen. Fifty-one points, plus-14, five game-winners, 18:08 a night.

Six years in Montreal built the reputation of a defensive centre who does not score. His first year in Los Angeles doubled his career high.

The Finesse Game

The goals came from where goals come from. 63 per cent of his shots from the slot is the 89th percentile, at a 19-foot median that is the 13th — the shortest of any King. 13.9 per cent is the 73rd percentile on a merely ordinary 8.13 shots per 60. He is not shooting more; he is shooting from closer than nearly anyone.

Eight per cent of his points came on the power play, the 32nd percentile. This is an even-strength player and the rate says so: 2.32 points per 60, the 77th.

56.5 per cent of the expected goals and 56.6 per cent of the attempts — the 89th and 92nd percentiles, and the best marks among Kings forwards. His ice went 53-41 against an expectation of 58.43-44.92.

His line was the club’s engine and he was the reason, though not by a wide margin. 59.6 per cent with Viktor Arvidsson across 1,287 attempts and 58.7 with Trevor Moore across 1,236; Arvidsson falls to 55.2 without him and Moore to 50.3, while Danault holds 51.8 and 53.3 on his own.

The Physical Game

3.10 hits per 60 is the 38th percentile and 2.05 blocks the 68th. He killed 1:42 a night, the 80th percentile, on a unit that finished 17th in the league. He drew and took penalties at exactly the same rate, 0.67 per 60 each.

0.92 takeaways per 60 is the 7th percentile, which sits oddly against everything else here and is worth stating rather than explaining away. The scorekeeper is not crediting him with stripping pucks. Whether that is a positional game that never produces the event, or simply an absence, is not something this data can separate.

The Intangibles

Nothing in the tracking marks him: 22.6 mph is the 62nd percentile, 9.53 miles per 60 the 38th, 3.5 bursts per 60 the 27th. He is an average skater by every measurement the chips take.

What he is instead is a centre whose ice wins, and who last year also finished. The first has six seasons of evidence behind it. The second has one, and seven against. Pricing him means deciding which of those you are buying.

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

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
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
56.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 51.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.3, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“63 per cent of his shots from the slot is the 89th percentile, at a 19-foot median that is the 13th — the shortest of any King.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He killed 1:42 a night, the 80th percentile, on a unit that finished 17th in the league.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,080 minutes

Expected goals: 56.5%; 92nd pct
Shot attempts: 56.6%; 94th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 41 against. Expected: 58.4 and 44.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

63rd

Numbers

92nd

The numbers rank him 29 points above where the report does. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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: 22.6 mph; 74th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.06 a game
Distance: 2.88 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.2 mph; 62nd 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

2021-22 · 1080 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, 2021-22

The club: LAK took 52.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.5% — 3.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,080 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Viktor Arvidsson	59.6%	51.8%	55.2%
Trevor Moore	58.7%	53.3%	50.3%
Alex Iafallo	57.0%	56.3%	52.1%

59.6% together, 51.8% for him apart and 55.2% for Arvidsson apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

256 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.