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

Sebastian Aho

74 points and a 58.4 per cent chance share, and an on-ice goal differential of minus-2 that should have been plus-15.

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	CAR	79	29	45	74	+7	46	5	3	9	207	14.0	20:06
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	677	283	348	631	+121	296	68	20	64	1873	15.1	19:05

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

29 goals and 45 assists in 79 games for 74 points, plus-7, on 20:06 a night and 207 shots, with 9 game-winners — the most in the league.

57.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 97th percentile. His on-ice goals were 47-57 against an expected 54.7-40.1, which is twenty-five goals of finishing and goaltending disappearing from underneath the best forward on the best possession team in hockey. This is the single clearest example of luck in this edition.

The Finesse Game

A complete centre with no obvious weakness in the puck game. The release is quick and heavy from the circle, the passing is better than the assist total on a club that could not finish, and he plays the same way with a lead as without one.

28 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet and a fifth from beyond 40, which is a man who takes what a shift offers rather than one who only shoots from a preferred spot. He is also one of the better faceoff centres in the league, which is why he takes the hard draws in every situation.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 189, and he is not physical. He wins pucks with his stick and his positioning rather than his body, and he is not going to move anybody from the net front.

46 penalty minutes is higher than his usual and reads as a season of frustration. The durability is excellent — 79 games, and he has cleared 75 in eight of nine seasons.

The Intangibles

Nine seasons in one organisation, a contract signed to stay rather than to leave, and a reputation as the least-discussed elite forward in the league.

The honest reading of last season is that he was outstanding and the scoreboard did not record it. A 98th-percentile chance share with a minus-2 on-ice differential does not happen twice; if the club fixes its crease, he has a 90-point season sitting in front of him.

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
6 of his 29 goals late or in overtime, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He is also one of the better faceoff centres in the league, which is why he takes the hard draws in every situation.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“the passing is better than the assist total on a club that could not finish”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“he is not going to move anybody from the net front”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6 feet and 189, and he is not physical.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,039 minutes

Expected goals: 57.7%; 97th pct
Shot attempts: 59.8%; 99th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 47 for, 57 against. Expected: 54.7 and 40.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

97th

Numbers

97th

The two rank him within 0 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 — 84 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 · 79 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 48th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.46 a game
Distance: 3.25 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.8 mph; 87th 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 · 1039 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: CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.7% — 1.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,039 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Seth Jarvis	60.7%	54.7%	59.5%
Jaccob Slavin	56.5%	58.5%	55.4%
Jalen Chatfield	54.7%	59.6%	54.8%

60.7% together, 54.7% for him apart and 59.5% for Jarvis apart. He was worse away from Jarvis, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Jarvis 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

338 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 29% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.