Adam Ruzicka
Calgary Flames Center
Six-foot-four, twenty points in forty-four games, and the tenth percentile in shot velocity.
| 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 | CGY | 44 | 6 | 14 | 20 | -1 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 64 | 9.4 | 11:35 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 75 | 11 | 20 | 31 | +9 | 20 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 100 | 11.0 | 11:02 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
6 goals and 14 assists in 44 games — 20 points at 11:35 a night, minus-1, with 2 power-play goals on 64 shots, converting at 9.38 per cent, and 8 penalty minutes.
54.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 440 minutes, the 84th percentile — which on this club is unremarkable, since almost everybody was above 50. His ice went 18-19 against an expectation of 18.14-15.16.
Twenty points in forty-four games is a 37-point pace, which for a fourth-line centre at twenty-three is a genuine step.
The Finesse Game
64 attempts at a median of 30 feet, 27 per cent from inside 20 and 26 per cent from beyond 40, off a shot measured at 84.5 mph — the 10th percentile.
Fourteen assists on six goals says the hands are for passing. 31 points in 75 career games. The shot will not beat NHL goaltenders from range and he does not get inside often enough to score any other way, which caps the projection at a third-line playmaker.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 215, and he does not play to it at all — 20 penalty minutes in 75 games, and for a man that size he is remarkably easy to move off a puck.
The skating is slow: 22.0 mph at the 36th percentile and 2.00 miles a game at the 16th. A big centre who neither skates nor hits has to be a very good passer to hold a job, and that is exactly the bet.
The Intangibles
A hundred and ninth overall in 2017, out of Slovakia, and a fourth-round pick who has taken six years to reach 75 NHL games.
He is 24. On a club with Backlund, Lindholm, Kadri and Dube down the middle he is the fourth or fifth centre, and the only path to more is somebody being traded — which, given the contract situation here, is not unlikely.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.18 penalty minutes a game over 44, 10th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“Fourteen assists on six goals says the hands are for passing.”
“for a man that size he is remarkably easy to move off a puck”
“6-4 and 215, and he does not play to it at all”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 440 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.5%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.4%
- 94th 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: 18 for, 19 against. Expected: 18.1 and 15.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 66 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 120 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 440 minutes at five-on-five
- Trevor Lewisnow LAK37%
- Tyler Toffolinow NJD25%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.5% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 440 minutes at five-on-five — 12th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Lewis | 50.6% | 56.6% | 51.1% |
| Noah Hanifin | 64.1% | 48.4% | 53.6% |
| Nikita Zadorov | 43.6% | 60.2% | 55.6% |
50.6% together, 56.6% for him apart and 51.1% 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
88 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 27% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.