This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Phillip Danault

A 58.1 per cent chance share — the 98th percentile — and 8 goals from 123 shots.

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	LAK	80	8	35	43	+20	26	1	0	3	123	6.5	17:40
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	711	125	269	394	+82	323	10	1	19	1265	9.9	17:13

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

8 goals and 35 assists in 80 games for 43 points, plus-20, on 17:40 a night.

57.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 96th percentile — the best figure on the club. His on-ice goals were 49-34 against an expected 50.4-37.8, which is four goals of goaltending in his favour on top of a chance share that was already near the top of the league.

The Finesse Game

The offence is entirely a byproduct of the defence. 123 shots and 8 goals at 6.5 per cent, with 47 per cent of the attempts from inside 20 feet — the locations are right and the finishing has never been there.

35 assists is the useful half and it comes from winning pucks back in the neutral zone and moving them immediately. He is one of the better defensive centres in the league and the reason his wingers score.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 200, and he plays a hard, relentless checking game. He wins the wall, blocks shots, and takes the defensive-zone draws when Kopitar is off.

26 penalty minutes over 80 games is disciplined. The durability is excellent — four consecutive seasons above 78 games.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick, two organisations, and a career of being the most valuable player nobody wants to pay for.

At 32 the projection is unchanged: 40 points, elite defensive work, and a chance share that most 90-point forwards would take. The contract has been criticised for four years and the numbers have never supported the criticism.

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
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“He is one of the better defensive centres in the league and the reason his wingers score.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins the wall, blocks shots, and takes the defensive-zone draws when Kopitar is off.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“blocks shots”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“takes the defensive-zone draws when Kopitar is off”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,109 minutes

Expected goals: 57.1%; 96th pct
Shot attempts: 56.7%; 95th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 34 against. Expected: 50.4 and 37.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

84th

Numbers

96th

The two rank him within 12 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 — 79 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 35th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.54 a game
Distance: 2.89 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.6 mph; 56th 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 · 1109 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: LAK took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.1% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,109 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Trevor Moore	58.0%	55.7%	47.3%
Kevin Fiala	58.6%	56.0%	56.6%
Warren Foegele	56.8%	57.3%	57.9%

58.0% together, 55.7% for him apart and 47.3% for Moore apart. Moore was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Moore than for 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

179 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.