This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Alexander Romanov
New York Islanders Defense
The 19th-most hits of 202 defencemen at twenty-two, with the 5th-lowest slot share and the 10th-percentile scoring rate.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | MTL | 54 | 1 | 5 | 6 | +1 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 1.4 | 17:15 |
| 2021-22 | MTL | 79 | 3 | 10 | 13 | -9 | 53 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 107 | 2.8 | 20:24 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 133 | 4 | 15 | 19 | -8 | 74 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 178 | 2.3 | 19:07 |
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
79 games for Montreal, 3 goals and 10 assists at 20:24 a night, minus-9, fifty-three penalty minutes. Thirty-eighth overall in 2018, two seasons, 133 games, 19 points.
The Finesse Game
0.56 even-strength points per 60 is the 10th percentile among defencemen and none of his points came on the power play — seven seconds a night.
Three per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 5th-lowest share of the 202, at a 55-foot median in the 97th percentile. He shoots from the blue line and nowhere else, at 2.8 per cent.
2.90 giveaways per 60 is the 95th percentile against 0.89 takeaways at the 50th.
46.4 per cent of the expected goals is the 22nd percentile and 47.2 per cent of the attempts the 25th, from 43.8 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 145th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.
His ice went 55-66 against an expectation of 52.98-61.14 — two goals of surplus going forward and five more against than the model asked, on a club whose goaltending finished 24th in the league.
The Physical Game
8.45 hits per 60 is the 19th-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-1 and 220 pounds.
5.36 blocks per 60 is the 82nd percentile among defencemen, from a twenty-two-year-old in his second season.
0.45 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.67 taken. Fifty-three penalty minutes in seventy-nine games is ordinary for the amount of contact.
The Intangibles
22.4 mph is the 76th percentile among defencemen — second only to Ryan Pulock on this blue line — at 1.4 bursts per 60 in the 46th and 8.24 miles per 60 in the 27th.
He is 22 with 133 NHL games and arrives from a club that finished 30th. The hits, the blocks and the top speed at 220 pounds are the case; the giveaway rate, the shot chart and the scoring rate are the cost.
Nothing here measures gap control or a first pass. What it measures is a heavy, quick, twenty-two-year-old defenceman with two full seasons of poor possession behind him on a poor team, and the record cannot yet say which half of that is his.
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
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
83.0% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“8.45 hits per 60 is the 19th-most of the 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 6-1 and 220 pounds.”
“5.36 blocks per 60 is the 82nd percentile among defencemen, from a twenty-two-year-old in his second season.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,389 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.4%
- 26th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.2%
- 31st 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: 55 for, 66 against. Expected: 53.0 and 61.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 22 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 60 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 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 84th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.47 a game
- Distance
- 2.80 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.1 mph
- 77th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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 with MTL · 1389 minutes at five-on-five
- David Savard33%
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
- MTL took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.4% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,389 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Savard | 47.6% | 45.8% | 43.2% |
| Nick Suzuki | 45.2% | 47.0% | 45.8% |
| Jake Evans | 47.1% | 46.2% | 48.6% |
47.6% together, 45.8% for him apart and 43.2% for Savard apart. Savard was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Savard than for him.
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
147 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.