Credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn ImagesSAN DIEGO, CA — There is a lazy version of the Quinton Byfield conversation that starts and ends with the box score. He scored fewer points than he did a season prior, so he’s essentially a bust, right? The breakout stalled as he had only flirted around the 50-55 point mark thus far. The second-overall pick is becoming a very good player rather than a great one, but to what end, what ceiling? As I have hinted at in previous articles, there is more than meets the eye, or rather, the box score, with this extremely talented young player. A player, I believe, that has Selke trajectory.
Let's take a look.
Byfield's individual five-on-five offense actually improved in 2025-26 despite the landscape around him changing pretty dramatically. His shot volume reached a career high. His individual expected goals, individual scoring chances, and individual high-danger chances all climbed with it. What collapsed was the part of his production most sensitive to the environment: assists, on-ice finishing, and the quality of the possessions Los Angeles was asking him to convert. The box score essentially didn't do him much justice. The player did not go backward in the same direction the points did.
That matters because 2026-27 is not a referendum on whether Byfield can play center. Los Angeles already has that answer. It is not even a clean referendum on whether he can be a first-line center. His 2024-25 season already gave them enough evidence to make that bet. The question now is how high the thing can go, and for the first time, the roster around him is being built to find out.
See, his last three seasons were three different jobs, looking at each individually. In 2023-24, he was being groomed for top matchups as a winger next to Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe. In 2024-25, he moved into the first true full-time center phase and immediately produced the cleanest two-way season of his career, controlling 56.89 percent of expected goals, 56.49 percent of scoring chances and 59.95 percent of high-danger chances at five-on-five. As the transfer of duties between Kopitar and Byfield pivoted in 2025-26, the job got heavier. This meant harder defensive starts, a heavier penalty-kill burden, a slower team from the back end, and a conversion environment that turned a productive individual process into an unimpressive point total.
Figure 1: Every share metric peaked in 2024-25, Byfield's first full season as a center and the cleanest two-way sample of his career. The 2025-26 decline was real, particularly in HDCF%, which fell from 59.95 to 52.40, but the floor across all four metrics remained above 50 percent. The process fell from elite to positive while the goals fell much farther. The job was also materially harder: defensive-zone starts increased, penalty-kill burden expanded and transition support deteriorated.A flat or falling point total across those three seasons does not describe a flat development curve. The job itself became substantially harder each time around, with not necessarily a stellar support cast.
The assist decomposition is where the 2025-26 season becomes clearest. Primary assists per 60 fell from 0.839 to 0.526 to 0.418 across the last three seasons. Secondary assists fell harder. The point collapse was almost entirely created by fewer teammates finishing sequences that touched Byfield, while his own scoring volume held or improved. His goal rate rose again, from 0.67 per 60 in 2023-24 to 0.737 in 2024-25 to 0.784 in 2025-26. His individual expected goals per 60 rebounded from 0.597 to 0.755. His high-danger chance rate recovered from 3.11 to 3.50 per 60.
Figure 2: Byfield's goals per 60 climbed in each of the last three seasons, reaching a career high in 2025-26. His individual expected goals per 60 dipped in 2024-25 and recovered. Primary assists per 60 fell sharply for a second straight year. The point collapse was an assist story, not a scoring process story. Those are two very different problems.Those are not the markers of a player whose offensive process has disappeared. That is a player who stopped having his work converted by the players around him.
The on-ice numbers confirm it. In 2024-25, Los Angeles produced 235 high-danger chances and allowed 157 with Byfield at five-on-five. In 2025-26, the Kings produced 240 and allowed 218. The offensive count increased by five. The defensive count increased by sixty-one. That is not a story about Byfield stopping to create offense. That is a story about a defensive environment that deteriorated significantly around him.
His offensive-zone start percentage fell from 52.43 in 2024-25 to 41.42 in 2025-26. His offensive-zone faceoff percentage moved from 52.79 to 46.39. The Kings were asking him to begin more sequences farther from the opponent's net while also simultaneously increasing his penalty-kill burden. That is two levers pulling against his production at once, and the point total reflected it rather than the player himself.
The forward with-or-without-you splits are the strongest evidence that his underlying value is not attached to any one winger. With Kempe, his expected goals percentage is 51.37 across 976 minutes. Without Kempe, Byfield jumps to 57.03. Kempe without Byfield sits at 49.28. The pair's relationship is more asymmetric than the reputation suggests, as Byfield's process survives without Kempe more comfortably than the reverse. Byfield-Laferriere posted 57.02 expected goals percentage and 59.19 high-danger chance percentage over more than 1,000 minutes. Byfield-Moore reached 59.61 and 60.58 over nearly 600. These are not ten-game hot streaks.
The opposition file closes another door on the easy criticism. Over the pooled three-year sample he shared significant five-on-five minutes with Connor McDavid, Elias Pettersson, Jack Eichel, Brayden Point, Leon Draisaitl, and Nathan MacKinnon. He did not win all of those matchups — McDavid crushed the Kings in chance quality, MacKinnon tilted stretches against him. But Pettersson, Eichel, and Draisaitl produced genuinely competitive and promising underlying results. That is what a real top-line matchup profile looks like: some wins, some losses, no sheltered-center escape hatch. The next step in his development does not require a sudden jump from protected second-line minutes into the deep end. He has already been in the deep end. The question is how to learn to produce more consistently.
The defenseman splits are more uncomfortable. With his prior teammate Jordan Spence, Byfield posted 60.53 expected goals percentage and 62.84 high-danger percentage. With Drew Doughty, 58.28 and 60.17. With Cody Ceci, 45.23 and 45.45. Without Ceci, Byfield was at 55.16 and 55.21. That is not a one-player indictment. It is a description of how badly the environment in which the puck leaves the defensive zone can change what Byfield's shifts become. His game starts with retrieval, transport, and interior pressure. When the puck does not get to him cleanly, the whole sequence collapses upstream of the scoresheet.
Figure 3: With-or-without-you (WOWY) data measures how a player's underlying numbers shift depending on which teammates share the ice. It does not establish causation, since matchups, zone starts and game state follow the combinations, but large directional splits are still informative. The green bars show Byfield's expected goals share when paired with each defenseman. The red bars show pairings that fell below the 50 percent break-even. The slate bars show Byfield's expected goals share when those same defensemen are off the ice, a consistent 52-58 percent regardless of the pairing. The gap between the green and slate bars tells you who elevates his environment. The gap between the red and slate bars tells you who collapses it.This is also why Artemi Panarin changes the conversation in a way that goes beyond simply adding a star. Panarin does not have to make Byfield more talented. He has to make more of Byfield's existing work end in goals. A 6-foot-5 center whose individual offensive process already reached a career high last season does not need a creative revolution. He needs a conversion environment that matches what he is already generating.
The power play is where the upper end of his production range becomes genuinely interesting. Across the last three seasons, Los Angeles produced roughly 8.7 to 9.5 expected goals per 60 with Byfield on the power play. The unit's high-danger rate stayed near 26-28 per 60. The production wasn’t always there. His share of the unit's interior high-danger chances fell from roughly 43-44 percent in 2023-24 and 2024-25 to about 27 percent in 2025-26. The unit did not stop creating, but his role inside it changed. The likely 2026-27 first unit of Fiala, Panarin, Byfield, Kempe and Clarke gives him a cleaner interior role than anything he has previously been given, a net-front and bumper, moving through the middle, sealing defenders, presenting a target and making the four creation threats around him more expensive to overplay. A 6-foot-5 center parked at the top of the crease changes sightlines before he touches the puck. That is where the counting-stat bridge between good and excellent gets built.
The one area where the data refuses to be generous is the penalty kill. Byfield's 2024-25 shorthanded season was legitimately strong. His 2025-26 season was legitimately poor, and the process numbers were bad enough that goaltending alone does not explain it. His expected goals against per 60 relative moved from -0.95 to +0.78, and his high-danger chances against per 60 relative moved from -4.56 to +3.20. That is a real regression, not a reframing exercise. His defensive-zone faceoff percentage on the kill was 38.69, and, not to oversimplify, losing a draw on the penalty kill immediately hands the opponent a settled possession. 2026-27, the team will have Laughton and Haula absorbing much of the PK load, but I would expect Byfield and Kempe to be first up despite the indifference to his faceoff percentage. If the defensive rebound that 2024-25 demonstrated is real and repeatable, it has to show up here too. If it does not, the Selke trajectory falls considerably regardless of what the five-on-five numbers do.
Point blank, he probably never becomes an Art Ross Trophy candidate, probably not remotely. The Frank J. Selke Trophy is different. If Byfield reconnects his 2024-25 defensive impact with the individual offense he showed in 2025-26, he should be a Selke dark horse next season and a recurring candidate beyond it. A sustainable prime in the 70-to-85-point range, with positive-to-elite five-on-five expected goal share, strong high-danger control, legitimate matchup minutes and first-unit power-play value, and he actualizes a franchise two-way first-line center. That is the destination the data keeps pointing toward, and with excellent options to finally flank him, a multi-faceted powerplay to center, he can break through new thresholds.
The best individual performance of Byfield's career came in the same season his aggregate stat line regressed. The best defensive season of his career came just one year earlier, in his first full season at center. The unresolved question is not whether those two things can coexist. It is whether 2026-27 is the season they finally do.
