Alexey Toropchenko

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

28 games, 2 goals and no assists at 10:43 a night, minus-9, fifteen penalty minutes, 43 shots. Hundred-and-thirteenth overall in 2017 by St Louis — the fourth round — one season, 28 games, 2 points.

Two hundred and ninety-four minutes of five-on-five ice is well short of the five hundred this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.

The Finesse Game

Forty-nine per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet at a 20-foot median, at 6-6 and 225 pounds.

Two goals from forty-three attempts is 4.7 per cent and only five per cent of those attempts came from beyond forty feet. He shoots from close range and did not score.

47.4 per cent of the expected goals across 294 five-on-five minutes, out of 36.6 per cent offensive-zone starts — forty-nine attacking starts against eighty-five in his own end, which is a hard chair for a rookie.

His ice went 6-16 against an expectation of 10.75-11.94 — almost five short in front and four more against, in a quarter of a season.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 225 pounds, and fifteen penalty minutes in twenty-eight games.

Just over half a penalty minute a game, off a ten-and-three-quarter-minute shift, and it is drawn from twenty-eight games, so it describes a tendency rather than establishing one.

The Intangibles

3.1 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game is the 96th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers with forty games, against a 22.5 mph top speed at the 63rd.

A 6-6, 225-pound forward getting above twenty miles an hour three times a game on a ten-minute shift is the most interesting number in the file, and twenty-eight games is not enough to bank it.

1.76 miles a game is the 5th percentile, which at 10:43 a night is the shift rather than the skater. His shot is 90.9 mph, the 44th percentile.

He is 23 with twenty-eight NHL games and two points. The size, the shot chart, the sprint count and a hard chair taken as a rookie are four things worth watching. Two points is the whole of the production record and there is nothing here yet that says what he becomes.