Returning regular · 2025-26
Ilya Lyubushkin
Nashville Predators · RD · R shot · age 32 at the dated snapshot.
- Team
- NSH
- Lane
- RD
- Age
- 32
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
4 RD regulars in NSH
The all-team median is 4. NSH’s farm system ranks #7 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?
Contract · NSH
$3.25M cap hit
2024–25 through 2026–27 · UFA at expiry. Certified
Cup signal › Costs more per point than the position median, but earns it with five-on-five creation or penalty-kill work.
- He kills penalties (1:28 a night), which points do not capture.
- Defencemen are compared only with defencemen. Points understate defensive value, so the on-ice impact measures on each player page carry the rest: the expected goals created and allowed while he plays, and the goals whose sequence began on his shift. The impact model in a later phase addresses that.
- 17 real points at this cap hit would pass the cost test (he had 9).
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 0.757). Finishing is goals minus expected goals; it is noisy in one season.
CapOrCup measures · 2025-26
What happens while he plays
Measured from the league's play-by-play and shift charts, not from the scoresheet. Expected goals are counted for every player on the ice, and a goal is credited to whoever was on the ice when the sequence began, including players who had changed off before it was scored.
Comparables at the same age
Who looked like this at 28 to 31
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: age 16 Russia U17 0.59 → age 17 MHL 0.04 → age 18 VHL 0.12 → age 19 KHL 0.06 → age 20 KHL 0.12 → age 21 KHL 0.20 → age 22 KHL 0.12 → age 23 KHL 0.18 → age 24 NHL 0.10 → age 25 NHL 0.08 → age 26 NHL 0.05 → age 27 NHL 0.20 → age 28 NHL 0.21 → age 29 NHL 0.07 → age 30 NHL 0.17 → age 31 NHL 0.17
| Player | Distance (lower is closer) | What he did afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Erik GudbransonD · matched at ages 28, 29, 30, 31 | 0.02 | age 32 NHL 0.33 → age 33 NHL 0.25 → age 34 NHL 0.08 |
| Jan GolicicD · matched at ages 28, 29, 31 | 0.05 | age 32 Poland 0.22 → age 33 Poland 0.15 → age 34 Poland 0.17 |
| Brayden McNabbD · matched at ages 28, 29, 30, 31 | 0.05 | age 32 NHL 0.21 → age 33 NHL 0.32 → age 34 NHL 0.24 → age 35 NHL 0.19 |
| Tomas GalvasD · matched at ages 29, 30, 31 | 0.06 | age 32 Czech2 0.10 → age 33 Czech4 0.23 |
| Luke SchennD · matched at ages 28, 29, 30, 31 | 0.07 | age 32 NHL 0.26 → age 33 NHL 0.38 → age 34 NHL 0.11 → age 35 NHL 0.08 → age 36 NHL 0.15 |
| Connor MurphyD · matched at ages 28, 29, 30, 31 | 0.07 | age 32 NHL 0.28 → age 33 NHL 0.22 |
| Dylan McIlrathD · matched at ages 28, 29, 30, 31 | 0.07 | age 32 NHL 0.12 → age 33 NHL 0.00 |
| Vladimir DraveckyD · matched at ages 28, 30, 31 | 0.07 | age 32 Czechia 0.17 → age 33 Czechia 0.12 → age 34 Czechia 0.16 → age 35 Czechia 0.06 → age 36 Czechia 0.12 |
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.
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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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.
Either side of that absence: 0 points per 60 in the ten games before, 1.94 in the ten after. A rate change over a small sample, not evidence of a lingering injury.
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.