Returning regular · 2025-26
Arshdeep Bains
Vancouver Canucks · LW · L shot · age 25 at the dated snapshot.
- Team
- VAN
- Lane
- LW
- Age
- 25
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
5 LW regulars in VAN
The all-team median is 4. VAN’s farm system ranks #14 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?
Tonight · 10:00 p.m. ET
VAN at EDM
Projected slot from the licensed depth chart; props from the model's learned layer on shots, finishing and the opposing starter; ratings are last season's until this one has enough games. Information, not a recommendation.
Nothing listed against Arshdeep Bains.
White noise · as of 2026-09-29 · social 2026-09-29
Arshdeep Bains is talked about more than most (89th percentile); attention this week is 4.46× 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: 16 posts named him this week on Bluesky · 81 likes, reposts and replies · no baseline yet, it needs a week of readings.
Contract · VAN
$0.78M cap hit
2025–26 through 2026–27 · RFA 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.
- He did not reach the five-on-five sample (20 games and 10:00 a night at five-on-five), so the rate test cannot pass.
- At 0.7% of the cap, almost any NHL production is surplus.
- 60% of his five-on-five shifts started in the offensive zone, a sheltered deployment that flatters scoring.
- 7 real points at this cap hit would pass the cost test (he had 5).
- A five-on-five rate of 1.68 per 60 (he had no qualifying sample) or a regular penalty-kill role (1:00+ a night) would pass the Cup side.
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 (1 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.
Career arc · era-adjusted points per 82 games
Arshdeep Bains, season by season
Each dot is one season. The amber bar is what his earlier seasons and his age predicted for that season (80% band), 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: quantile regression (10th/50th/90th) of qualifying seasons on an age spline, weighted for players who drop out.
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%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 23 | 8 | 0.0 | 4.4 to 80.4 |
| 2024-25 | 24 | 13 | 6.0 | −7.7 to 51.5 |
| 2025-26 | 25 | 28 | 13.5 | −9.3 to 35.9 |
Source: CapOrCup careers desk (method and league curves) · as of 2026-09-29
Comparables at the same age
Who looked like this at 22 to 25
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 15 CSSHL U15 1.12 → age 16 BCEHL U18 0.89 → age 17 WHL 0.17 → age 18 WHL 0.29 → age 19 WHL 0.81 → age 20 WHL 0.91 → age 21 WHL 1.65 → age 22 AHL 0.58 → age 23 AHL 0.93 → age 24 NHL 0.08 → age 25 NHL 0.18
| Player | Distance (lower is closer) | What he did afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Ben MeyersC · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.05 | age 26 AHL 0.41 → age 27 NHL 0.29 |
| Zack MacEwenC · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.06 | age 26 NHL 0.20 → age 27 NHL 0.10 → age 28 NHL 0.14 |
| Jonny BrodzinskiC · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.07 | age 26 AHL 0.31 → age 27 AHL 0.55 → age 28 NHL 0.09 → age 29 NHL 0.12 → age 30 NHL 0.33 |
| Noel AcciariC · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.07 | age 26 NHL 0.18 → age 27 NHL 0.19 → age 28 NHL 0.41 → age 29 NHL 0.27 → age 30 NHL 0.40 |
| Alex BelzileR · matched at ages 23, 24, 25 | 0.07 | age 26 AHL 0.25 → age 27 AHL 0.33 → age 28 AHL 0.32 → age 29 AHL 0.38 → age 30 NHL 0.00 |
| Beck MalenstynL · matched at ages 22, 24, 25 | 0.08 | age 26 NHL 0.26 → age 27 NHL 0.13 → age 28 NHL 0.17 |
| Frederick GaudreauC · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.08 | age 26 AHL 0.30 → age 27 NHL 0.53 → age 28 NHL 0.58 → age 29 NHL 0.46 → age 30 NHL 0.22 |
| Dominik ShineR · matched at ages 22, 23, 24, 25 | 0.08 | age 26 AHL 0.13 → age 27 AHL 0.06 → age 28 AHL 0.20 → age 29 AHL 0.17 → age 30 AHL 0.23 |
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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Club listings · licensed feeds
What the club lists him as
An injury listing and a projected slot are the club's statements relayed by a licensed feed, shown with their dates. CapOrCup infers nothing from them.
Projected slot · line 4 left wing (VAN depth chart as of 2026-09-28; Sportradar NHL API v7, team depth charts)
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.