This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Phillip Danault
Los Angeles Kings Center
A shutdown centre with a 95th-percentile chance share and one shorthanded goal in 631 games.
| 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 | LAK | 82 | 18 | 36 | 54 | -8 | 63 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 152 | 11.8 | 18:20 |
| 2023-24 | LAK | 78 | 17 | 30 | 47 | +12 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 10.7 | 18:01 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 631 | 117 | 234 | 351 | +62 | 297 | 9 | 1 | 16 | 1142 | 10.3 | 17:09 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
78 games, 17 goals and 30 assists for 47 points, 3 on the power play, 18 penalty minutes, 18:01 a night and plus-12. He took 57.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,096 minutes, the 95th percentile, and his ice went 51-38 against an expectation of 53.04-39.31.
Level at both ends: a line that got precisely what its play deserved. The 95th percentile on the assignment he takes is worth more than the point total.
The Finesse Game
159 shots at a median of 25 feet with 43 per cent from inside 20, converted at 10.7 per cent against a career 10.3.
234 career assists in 631 games. The offence is a by-product and forty-seven points is about the ceiling. What he does with the puck is keep it, and the cycle he runs below the goal line is the reason his line spends so little time defending.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 200 and wins the wall against anybody.
18 penalty minutes in 78 games at eighteen minutes a night against other clubs’ best lines is a remarkable rate. He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he defends by taking the puck rather than the man.
The Intangibles
Twenty-sixth overall in 2011 out of Victoriaville, ten seasons, and 351 points in 631 games. He kills penalties and has 1 career shorthanded goal in 631 games, which is a strange line for a man who has done nothing else for a decade.
He is 31 and has been the same player for eight years. On a club whose penalty kill is 21st, the fact that its best defensive centre has one career shorthanded goal is worth sitting with.
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
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is 6-1 and 200 and wins the wall against anybody.”
“He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he defends by taking the puck rather than the man.”
“He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he defends by taking the puck rather than the man.”
“He kills penalties and has 1 career shorthanded goal in 631 games, which is a strange line for a man who has done nothing else for a decade.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,096 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.4%
- 95th pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.9%
- 92nd 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: 51 for, 38 against. Expected: 53.0 and 39.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 28 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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, 2023-24 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 74th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.79 a game
- Distance
- 2.89 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.9 mph
- 64th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 1096 minutes at five-on-five
- Trevor Moore87%
- Kevin Fiala61%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- LAK took 54.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.4% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,096 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Moore | 58.0% | 52.9% | 57.4% |
| Kevin Fiala | 58.4% | 56.0% | 58.6% |
| Drew Doughty | 54.6% | 59.4% | 55.2% |
58.0% together, 52.9% for him apart and 57.4% for Moore apart. He was worse away from Moore, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Moore did.
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
218 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.