This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sam Bennett
Florida Panthers Center
25 goals, 90 penalty minutes, and a Conn Smythe on a 53.4 per cent chance share.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | CGY | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 16:00 |
| 2015-16 | CGY | 77 | 18 | 18 | 36 | -11 | 37 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 136 | 13.2 | 15:09 |
| 2016-17 | CGY | 81 | 13 | 13 | 26 | -16 | 75 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 122 | 10.7 | 14:59 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 82 | 11 | 15 | 26 | -18 | 59 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 157 | 7.0 | 14:24 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 71 | 13 | 14 | 27 | -6 | 93 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 115 | 11.3 | 13:17 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 52 | 8 | 4 | 12 | -1 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 9.8 | 12:31 |
| 2020-21 | CGY/FLA | 48 | 10 | 17 | 27 | -2 | 52 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 106 | 9.4 | 14:25 |
| 2021-22 | FLA | 71 | 28 | 21 | 49 | +27 | 74 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 241 | 11.6 | 16:57 |
| 2022-23 | FLA | 63 | 16 | 24 | 40 | +5 | 54 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 193 | 8.3 | 17:24 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 69 | 20 | 21 | 41 | +17 | 100 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 171 | 11.7 | 16:37 |
| 2024-25 | FLA | 76 | 25 | 26 | 51 | -15 | 90 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 241 | 10.4 | 17:27 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 691 | 162 | 174 | 336 | -21 | 670 | 34 | 0 | 25 | 1565 | 10.3 | 15:24 |
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
25 goals and 26 assists in 76 games for 51 points, minus-15, on 17:27 a night with 90 penalty minutes and 241 shots.
52.3 per cent at five-on-five, the 72nd percentile, with on-ice goals of 45-50 against an expected 50-45. 10.4 per cent shooting on 241 attempts is well below his career rate and part of the same club-wide problem.
The Finesse Game
Better hands than the reputation allows. He scores from the interior — 42 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet — and the release in traffic is quick, which is what a man who lives at the net front needs.
26 assists is honest. He is not a distributor and does not need to be; his offence comes from being the most difficult forward in the league to remove from the paint.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 193, and among the two or three most physically punishing forwards in hockey. He hits everything, he cross-checks, he is genuinely disliked around the league, and he has been the difference in more playoff series than his regular-season totals suggest.
90 penalty minutes is the second-highest total on the club. Some of that is unavoidable and some of it is a cost the penalty kill absorbs.
The Intangibles
A 4th overall pick who spent six years in Calgary being called a disappointment, a change of club that transformed him, two Cups, and a Conn Smythe.
At 29 he is the most valuable playoff forward on a roster full of them. The regular-season numbers have never fully reflected it and there is no reason to expect them to start.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- 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.
“He scores from the interior — 42 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet — and the release in traffic is quick, which is what a man who lives at the net front needs.”
“He is not a distributor and does not need to be”
“his offence comes from being the most difficult forward in the league to remove from the paint”
“6-1 and 193, and among the two or three most physically punishing forwards in hockey.”
“He hits everything, he cross-checks, he is genuinely disliked around the league, and he has been the difference in more playoff series than his regular-season totals suggest.”
“90 penalty minutes is the second-highest total on the club. Some of that is unavoidable and some of it is a cost the penalty kill absorbs.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,058 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.3%
- 72nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.5%
- 90th 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: 45 for, 50 against. Expected: 49.7 and 45.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 24 points above where the numbers do. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.55 a game
- Distance
- 3.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.0 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 · 1058 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
- FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.3% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,058 minutes at five-on-five — 69th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Tkachuk | 53.7% | 50.9% | 60.3% |
| Niko Mikkola | 53.8% | 51.2% | 53.0% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 46.3% | 56.1% | 59.5% |
53.7% together, 50.9% for him apart and 60.3% for Tkachuk apart. Tkachuk was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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
326 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.