Aliaksei Protas

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

4 goals and 11 assists in 58 games — 15 points — at 11:31 a night. Minus-8, 83 shots at 4.8 per cent, 12 penalty minutes.

53.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 644 minutes, the 73rd percentile — the best of any forward on this roster — with his ice at 23-28 against an expectation of 26.45-23.25.

Three fewer goals scored than the chances called for and five more allowed, which is why a 73rd-percentile share reads as a minus-8.

He started 31.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 4th percentile: 118 attacking draws against 253 defensive ones.

A twenty-two-year-old taking the fourth percentile of starts and producing the seventy-third percentile of chances is the most encouraging row in this chapter.

The Finesse Game

83 shots at a median of 23 feet, with 43 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 12 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 38 shots on goal and four goals — 10.53 per cent, well below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 25 shots and none. Beyond forty: 13 shots and none.

Four goals from seventy-six shots on goal. The finishing is the problem and it is not marginal: 7 goals in 91 career games at 6.0 per cent, from a man who gets to the right places and cannot convert once he is there.

105 tracked attempts, 60 of them wrist shots and only one slap shot. His shot is measured at 89.0 mph, the 38th percentile — which for a man this size is soft.

He goes to the net and screens, and the 38 shots on goal from inside twenty feet say he is getting there. What happens next is what the next three seasons have to answer.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 250 pounds — the third-heaviest skater in this book — with 12 penalty minutes in 58 games and 12 in 91 career games.

Top speed 22.5 mph at the 59th percentile and 1.4 bursts above twenty a game at the 71st, on 1.80 miles a game at the 7th percentile, which is eleven and a half minutes of ice time.

He moves well for a man that size and the burst count says so.

Nobody in this league moves him off a puck, and at 6-6 and 250 pounds on a fourth line taking defensive-zone starts that is the entire reason he is in the line-up at twenty-two.

Twelve penalty minutes in ninety-one career games is a remarkable figure for a man of this size and it says he does not use it as a weapon. He shields rather than hits, and whether that changes is a fair question for a club to ask.

The Intangibles

Ninety-first overall in 2019, the third round, two seasons, 91 games, 24 points, all of them here.

Seven goals and seventeen assists, and a minus-4.

He is twenty-two, a Belarusian third-round pick, and he has played ninety NHL games before his twenty-third birthday.

The size is unmatched and the chance share is genuinely good; the finishing is the whole of the doubt. Four goals in fifty-eight games from a bottom-six forward is not a problem, and 6.0 per cent across ninety-one games is the number that decides whether he is a fourth-line centre or something better.