This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Thomas Harley
Dallas Stars Defense
16 goals and 50 points at 24, plus-32, and the man who played the hardest minutes while Miro Heiskanen was hurt.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | DAL | 34 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 2.8 | 13:41 |
| 2022-23 | DAL | 6 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0.0 | 16:48 |
| 2023-24 | DAL | 79 | 15 | 32 | 47 | +28 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 144 | 10.4 | 21:01 |
| 2024-25 | DAL | 78 | 16 | 34 | 50 | +32 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 171 | 9.4 | 23:23 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 197 | 32 | 71 | 103 | +61 | 42 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 359 | 8.9 | 20:34 |
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
16 goals and 34 assists in 78 games for 50 points, plus-32, on 23:23 a night — the heaviest workload on the club and a career high in every column.
52.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 77th percentile, over 1,443 minutes. His on-ice goals were 78-49 against an expected 68-61, so the defensive results ran ahead of the chances allowed. 171 shots from a median of 50 feet.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the foundation and it is very good — long, easy strides that let him leave a forecheck without hurrying and join a rush without being caught. He carries the puck out rather than passing it out, which is the specific skill that makes a defence corps look fast.
16 goals from the blue line is a real shot, though the distances say most of it is volume from the point rather than deception. The passing is quick and mostly right; the errors come when he tries a second option after the first is gone, and there were fewer of those than the year before.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 214, and he does not use it. He defends with gaps and reach, not with weight, and he can be moved off the front of his own net by a determined forward.
16 penalty minutes across 78 games is either excellent discipline or a defenceman who is not in enough of the traffic. On this blue line it is both.
The Intangibles
Handed 23 minutes a night at 23 when Heiskanen went down, and did not visibly struggle with any of it. That is a substantial thing to have learned about a young defenceman.
The fair caution is that the season looks better than the underlying play — 53 per cent is good, not elite, and the plus-32 was helped by the best goaltending in the West. He is a genuine top-pair defenceman. He is not yet the one this club would like to believe he is.
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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
7 of 162 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.3%, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
6 of his 16 goals late or in overtime, 95th percentile among defencemen
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
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
18:30 a game at five-on-five, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
“He carries the puck out rather than passing it out, which is the specific skill that makes a defence corps look fast.”
“He defends with gaps and reach, not with weight”
“6-3 and 214, and he does not use it.”
“he can be moved off the front of his own net by a determined forward”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,443 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.9%
- 77th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.5%
- 78th 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: 78 for, 49 against. Expected: 68.4 and 60.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 — 78 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 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 74th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.94 a game
- Distance
- 3.49 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.0 mph
- 61st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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 · 1443 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
- DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.9% — 2.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,443 minutes at five-on-five — 97th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ilya Lyubushkin | 48.7% | 54.9% | 49.7% |
| Matt Duchene | 56.6% | 51.3% | 47.9% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 50.0% | 54.3% | 50.2% |
48.7% together, 54.9% for him apart and 49.7% for Lyubushkin apart. He was better away from Lyubushkin, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Lyubushkin.
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
246 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.