This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →
Adam Ruzicka
Calgary Flames Center
Twenty-eight games at ten minutes a night, five goals, and a plus-8 from a fourth-round pick at twenty-two.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | CGY | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 10:45 |
| 2021-22 | CGY | 28 | 5 | 5 | 10 | +8 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 15.2 | 10:13 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 31 | 5 | 6 | 11 | +10 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 13.9 | 10:16 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
5 goals and 5 assists in 28 games — 10 points at 10:13 a night, plus-8, with 8 penalty minutes.
50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 280 minutes. His ice went 14-4 against an expectation of 10.9-10.52 — three more goals for than the chances promised and six fewer against, which over 280 minutes is entirely noise and a very pleasant kind of noise.
Two hundred and eighty minutes is well below the 500 this book requires before it will rank a player, so no percentiles are quoted here.
The Finesse Game
Thirty-three shots and five goals, at 15.2 per cent, from a median of 23 feet with 34 per cent from the slot. Ten points in 28 games is a two-thirds-of-a-point-per-game pace in a fourth-line role, which is the whole of the case for him.
84.8 mph is a soft shot and the goals came from being in the right place rather than from beating a goaltender.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 215 at 23, and the frame is the reason he was drafted. 1.84 miles a game is a bottom-of-the-roster figure and a ten-minute-a-night artefact.
He does not yet play a physical game to match the size, which is the ordinary complaint about a large young forward and is worth stating without pretending it is measured here.
The Intangibles
One hundred and ninth overall in 2017, fourth round, and 31 NHL games at 23.
Calgary has lost Sean Monahan, Calle Jarnkrok, Ryan Carpenter and Johnny Gaudreau out of the forward group and brought in three men. There is more room in this lineup than there has been in five years, and he is the internal candidate best placed to take some of it.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 280 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.9%
- 62nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.8%
- 91st 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: 14 for, 4 against. Expected: 10.9 and 10.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 33 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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, 2021-22 · 28 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 36th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.00 a game
- Distance
- 1.84 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.8 mph
- 38th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 280 minutes at five-on-five
- Trevor Lewis61%
- Milan Lucic42%
- Dillon Dube21%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 4.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 280 minutes at five-on-five — 7th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Lewis | 48.1% | 54.9% | 45.6% |
| Milan Lucic | 42.9% | 56.3% | 51.4% |
| Nikita Zadorov | 52.7% | 49.6% | 56.0% |
48.1% together, 54.9% for him apart and 45.6% for Lewis apart. He was better away from Lewis, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Lewis.
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
44 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.