Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

29

Pontus Holmberg

Tampa Bay Lightning Right Wing

Nineteen points in 68 games in Toronto, and a fourth-line centre signed in the summer.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23TOR3758130181022718.510:25
2023-24TOR5471017+11180015413.011:34
2024-25TOR6871219+4270106810.312:40
2025-26 so far
Career159193049+156311314912.811:46

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

7 goals and 12 assists in 68 games for Toronto — 19 points at 12:40 a night, plus-4, with a shorthanded goal and 27 penalty minutes.

He played every game of Toronto’s playoff run and was a fourth-line centre on a club that finished with 108 points. That is the job description he was signed to repeat.

The Finesse Game

68 attempts and 7 goals at 10.3 per cent. There is no shot to speak of: 49 points in 159 NHL games.

12 assists in 68 games. He supports the puck low, he makes the simple play out of his own end, and he wins the draw that begins the shift.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 201 and honest. He forechecks properly, he blocks shots, and he does not initiate much.

27 penalty minutes in 68 games. He is disciplined, he can be trusted with a lead, and he kills penalties on a unit that finished 30th in the league in shorthanded time.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2018 out of Sweden, and 159 NHL games in across three seasons.

He is 26 and Tampa Bay signed him in the summer. On a roster whose bottom six lost three men, a cheap fourth-line centre who kills penalties is exactly the sort of signing this organisation makes.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 748 minutes

Expected goals
49.9%
53rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.3%
27th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 25 against. Expected: 26.8 and 26.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
36th
Numbers
53rd

The two rank him within 17 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 — 70 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with TOR · 748 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
TOR took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 748 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Morgan Rielly42.2%54.0%51.1%
William Nylander55.3%46.8%48.2%
Oliver Ekman-Larsson49.9%49.9%49.6%

42.2% together, 54.0% for him apart and 51.1% for Rielly apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

104 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.