This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Aliaksei Protas
Washington Capitals Left Wing
Eighty per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet, and no penalty minutes in thirty-three games.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | WSH | 33 | 3 | 6 | 9 | +4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 8.8 | 11:50 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 33 | 3 | 6 | 9 | +4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 8.8 | 11:50 |
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
33 games, 3 goals and 6 assists at 11:50 a night, plus-4, no penalty minutes at all, 34 shots. Ninety-first overall in 2019 by Washington — the third round — one season, 33 games, 9 points.
Three hundred and seventy-one minutes of five-on-five ice and thirty-three games are both well short of the gate this book uses, so what follows is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
Eighty per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet, at a 17-foot median.
The highest slot share among the 393 qualified forwards is Paul Stastny’s 77.7 per cent. Protas is above it on a third of a season and is not in the pool, so this is not a league lead — it is a shot chart nobody with a full season’s worth of shots quite matched.
Three goals from thirty-four shots is 8.8 per cent, off 5.22 shots per 60, which is a very low rate of pucks even for eleven minutes a night. He gets to the paint and does not shoot from it often.
1.34 even-strength points per 60.
54.0 per cent of the expected goals against 53.8 per cent of the attempts across 371 five-on-five minutes, out of 60.0 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 54th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a soft chair, and shares comfortably above it.
His ice went 16-13 against an expectation of 15.15-12.89, level at both ends across twenty-nine goals, which is not a sample.
2.30 giveaways per 60 against 1.23 takeaways is the figure that reads worst, and it is the ordinary complaint about a 21-year-old.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 250 pounds — the 3rd-heaviest man in this edition, behind only Nikita Zadorov and Jamie Oleksiak, and the heaviest forward in it.
3.07 hits per 60 is a low rate for that frame, and he took no penalties at all across thirty-three games.
1.84 blocks per 60.
The Intangibles
22.9 mph and 4.15 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60, both from thirty-three games, and 9.43 miles per 60. His shot is 88.1 mph.
He is 21, a third-round pick of this club, born in Vitebsk. A 6-6, 250-pound winger who takes four shots in five from inside twenty feet, covers ordinary ground at 22.9 mph and has not been called for a penalty is a genuinely unusual thing to find in a third round. Three goals in thirty-three games and a 5.22 shot rate are why the club has not yet asked him for more than eleven minutes.
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
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 371 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54%
- 82nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.8%
- 83rd 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: 16 for, 13 against. Expected: 15.2 and 12.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 15 points of one another. 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.
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 — 64 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 · 33 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 86th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.82 a game
- Distance
- 1.86 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.1 mph
- 55th 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 · 371 minutes at five-on-five
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
- WSH took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.0% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 371 minutes at five-on-five — 12th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Carlson | 60.5% | 49.8% | 48.7% |
| Martin Fehervary | 60.7% | 50.1% | 47.2% |
| Alex Ovechkin | 49.2% | 56.7% | 49.2% |
60.5% together, 49.8% for him apart and 48.7% for Carlson apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 61% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.