This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Sebastian Aho

Eighty-nine points, thirty-six goals and ten game-winners — and the worst five-on-five goal ledger of any regular on the club.

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

2016-17	CAR	82	24	25	49	-1	26	6	1	4	214	11.2	16:47
2017-18	CAR	78	29	36	65	+4	24	8	0	4	200	14.5	17:55
2018-19	CAR	82	30	53	83	+25	26	3	4	7	243	12.3	20:09
2019-20	CAR	68	38	28	66	+10	26	8	4	5	206	18.4	19:25
2020-21	CAR	56	24	33	57	+16	32	7	3	7	148	16.2	19:28
2021-22	CAR	79	37	44	81	+18	38	13	1	9	221	16.7	18:57
2022-23	CAR	75	36	31	67	+8	42	7	3	9	218	16.5	19:30
2023-24	CAR	78	36	53	89	+34	36	11	1	10	216	16.7	19:38
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	598	254	303	557	+114	250	63	17	55	1666	15.3	18:57

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

36 goals and 53 assists in 78 games — 89 points at 19:38 a night, with 11 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded goal and 10 game-winners on 216 shots, converting at 16.67 per cent, and 36 penalty minutes.

54.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,102 minutes, the 86th percentile. His ice went 58-31 against an expectation of 53.87-44.39 — four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and thirteen fewer conceded than they called for, on a club that finished last in the league in finishing.

The Finesse Game

216 attempts at a median of 26 feet, with 35 per cent from inside 20 and 24 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 16.67 per cent — a career 15.25 across 1,666 shots, so the finishing is the player rather than the year.

He holds the puck below the goal line and waits for the seam rather than forcing it, and 53 assists and 303 for his career is the larger half of what he does. He is one of a small number of forwards in the league who is genuinely equal at both.

Ten game-winning goals is the most on the club and 55 for his career in 598 games.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 189. He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody, and he will lose a puck on the wall to a heavy defenceman.

36 penalty minutes in 78 games and 250 in 598 for his career is a low rate. He is trusted a man short and has 17 career shorthanded goals, which for a first-line centre is unusual and is the anticipation rather than the speed.

The Intangibles

Thirty-fifth overall in 2015 — a second-round pick — out of Rauma, and 598 games, 557 points and a career plus-114, all of them here.

He is 27 and is the best player on a club that was first in the league in shot attempts. A second-round pick who becomes a point-a-game first-line centre is the piece of drafting the whole decade of this club rests on, and the twenty goals missing from his ice last season are the single clearest illustration of what happened to this team.

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
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.

clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
8 of his 36 goals late or in overtime, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He holds the puck below the goal line and waits for the seam rather than forcing it**, and **53 assists and 303 for his career** is the larger half of what he does.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“**He is trusted a man short and has 17 career shorthanded goals**, which for a first-line centre is unusual and is the anticipation rather than the speed.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody, and he will lose a puck on the wall to a heavy defenceman.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody, and he will lose a puck on the wall to a heavy defenceman.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“**A second-round pick who becomes a point-a-game first-line centre is the piece of drafting the whole decade of this club rests on**, and the twenty goals missing from his ice last season are the single clearest illustration of what happened to this team.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,102 minutes

Expected goals: 54.8%; 86th pct
Shot attempts: 57.5%; 96th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 58 for, 31 against. Expected: 53.9 and 44.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

95th

Numbers

86th

The two rank him within 9 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 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: 22.9 mph; 82nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.46 a game
Distance: 3.25 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.0 mph; 65th 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

2023-24 · 1102 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, 2023-24

The club: CAR took 56.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.8% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,102 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Seth Jarvis	56.5%	53.1%	60.0%
Andrei Svechnikov	55.5%	54.4%	55.5%
Jaccob Slavin	55.1%	54.7%	58.9%

56.5% together, 53.1% for him apart and 60.0% for Jarvis apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Jarvis and did not follow 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

313 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 38 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 35% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.