Liam O'Brien
Utah Mammoth · C · shoots L · 32 · UFA at expiry
Contract, value & projections
- Paid
- 1.0% of the cap · through 2026–27 · the contract
- Worth
- 1.0% of the cap · Cup: paid under the market
- Next
- Not on file (not projected yet)
- Drive (3 seasons)
- Too few minutes to judge (fewer than the minimum 5v5 hours)
Tonight UTA do not play · next league date 2026-10-26
Production and deployment
How the points were built
Official NHL 2025–26 regular-season reports. A missing split stays “—”; it is never converted to zero.
Organizational context
C regulars in UTA
The all-team median is . UTA’s farm system sits #3 in the maintained two-board consensus.
Questions a GM still has to answer
- How much of the scoring comes at five-on-five, on special teams, or into an empty net?
- Is the player creating the play, finishing it, or receiving a secondary point?
- Does deployment reveal trust, scarcity, underuse, or a role the roster cannot offer?
- What contract, acquisition cost, development alternative and Cup-window effect complete the argument?
White noise · as of 2026-10-18 · social 2026-10-18
Liam O'Brien is in the middle of the pack for attention (63rd percentile); attention this week is 2.06× his usual
How much he is being talked about: the league's own stories tagged to him, daily pageviews of his Wikipedia article against his own 90-day baseline, posts naming him on the connected networks (Bluesky), and the roster moves and listings that make noise. A measure of attention. Whether it affects a player is his business, and a question the history will let us test later.
Social: .
Contract · UTA
cap hit
2024–25 through 2026–27 · UFA at expiry. Reported
Role question › Costs more per point than the position median and is below the line on five-on-five creation and penalty-kill use. Either the contract or the deployment needs a look.
Measures · 2025–26 · 80% rank ranges
Where Liam O'Brien ranks, and how sure we are
Each rank is the 10th to 90th percentile of his place when every skater's value is redrawn 1,000 times from his own band. One season rarely separates a player from the dozens around him.
- #634#517 to #658 of 678
Could sit anywhere in the field of 678; anywhere from 517th to 658th.
In 0 of 100 seasons like this one, he finishes in the top ten.
0 of 20 dots sit above zero (the average regular). Each dot is one equally likely outcome (1 in 20). - #475#164 to #633 of 678
Likely a top-500 skater; anywhere from 164th to 633rd.
In 0 of 100 seasons like this one, he finishes in the top ten.
7 of 20 dots sit above zero (the average regular). Each dot is one equally likely outcome (1 in 20). - #514#276 to #640 of 744
Likely a top-500 skater; anywhere from 276th to 640th.
In 0 of 100 seasons like this one, he finishes in the top ten.
1 of 20 dots sit above zero (the average regular). Each dot is one equally likely outcome (1 in 20). - #482#178 to #631 of 678
Likely a top-500 skater; anywhere from 178th to 631st.
In 0 of 100 seasons like this one, he finishes in the top ten.
6 of 20 dots sit above zero (the average regular). Each dot is one equally likely outcome (1 in 20). - #390#103 to #606 of 678
Likely a top-400 skater; anywhere from 103rd to 606th.
In fewer than 1 of 100 seasons like this one, he finishes in the top ten.
9 of 20 dots sit above zero (the average regular). Each dot is one equally likely outcome (1 in 20).
Shot quality · 2025-26
Expected goals
CapOrCup's shot model (distance, angle, shot type, strength, rebounds, rushes), trained on 2023-24 and 2024-25 and tested on unseen games (AUC ). Finishing is goals minus expected goals; it is noisy in one season.
Advanced scoring · 2025-26
Goals, assists and plus/minus, weighted by what they changed
Every goal counts the win probability it added, scaled so the average goal is 1.0: a late tying goal counts several, a goal at 6-1 or into an empty net late counts little. Plus/minus also credits the players on the ice when the goal's sequence began.
From the video · model judgement
What the condensed games showed
Read from the league's free condensed games ( game so far): entries, exits, battles and turnovers the model could see and attribute to his jersey number. A condensed game is a sample of the game, so these are observations, not season counts.
NHL EDGE tracking · 2025-26
Speed, shot and ice
From the NHL's own player-tracking data. Percentiles are the NHL's: the share of the league below this player.
Goal archive ·
Every goal, with the league's video
Preseason, regular season and playoffs are kept apart. Each row links to the NHL's own highlight page; no video is hosted here. Where a clip has been reviewed, the reading of it is a model judgement of the frames, not a measurement.
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Career arc ·
Liam O'Brien, season by season
Each dot is one season. The amber bar is what his earlier seasons and his age predicted for that season (), so a dot far above its bar is a season the numbers did not see coming. The shaded band is where most players at his position sit at each age.
Position band: .
What the numbers found
No shipped label applies. A label is a measured finding about a run of seasons (for example, a spike that came back to the old level), and it is shown only for label types that passed their test on held-out seasons.
Projection at the draft
No draft projection: projections exist for players drafted from 2005 on who have season lines on file.
Every season
| Season | Age | GP | Level | Expected (80%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | ||||
| 2016-17 | ||||
| 2017-18 | ||||
| 2020-21 | ||||
| 2021-22 | ||||
| 2022-23 | ||||
| 2023-24 | ||||
| 2024-25 | ||||
| 2025-26 |
Source: CapOrCup careers desk (method and league curves) · as of 2026-10-18
Availability
Games missed
The NHL publishes no injury feed. This counts games his club played while he did not dress, for any reason: injury, illness, a healthy scratch, a suspension or a trade gap. No cause is claimed.
Comparables at the same age
Who looked like this at
Careers are compared as league-adjusted points per game by age, over the same ages. The comparables below are the closest lines, and what matters is the spread of what they did next, not any single name.
This player so far:
| Player | Distance (lower is closer) | What he did afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Justin DowlingC · matched at ages | ||
| Nicolas DeslauriersL · matched at ages | ||
| Tyler PitlickC · matched at ages | ||
| Scott SabourinR · matched at ages | ||
| Sean KuralyC · matched at ages | ||
| Casey CizikasC · matched at ages | ||
| Garnet HathawayR · matched at ages | ||
| Nic DowdC · matched at ages |
Reading it
If most comparables became NHL regulars and their later peak sits well above this player's current line, the numbers say there is room to grow. If most did not, the numbers say the odds are against it. Either way it is what the data shows, not a name chosen to flatter.
Fit components (description)
Liam O'Brien: role, system and coach, as measured
What the shift charts say about Liam O'Brien's role and his club's game, and what the rules allow. No fit number is shown: fit: not yet validated.
Rules that travel with him: blocked. Club-specific rules (50 contracts, 23-man roster, the two front offices) are on each team's Moves tab.
- Trade protection: Not on file. clause not confirmed. CBA Art. 11.8(a)
- Waiver exemption: blocked. signed at 20: past 3 seasons or 160 NHL games (now season 13, 265 games). CBA Art. 13.4
as of 2026-04-16