Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

10

Andrei Kuzmenko

Los Angeles Kings Left Wing

37 points in 66 games across two clubs, and a winger nobody has been able to place since he scored 39.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23VAN81393574+98140414327.316:15
2023-24VAN/CGY72222446-91280412118.214:53
2024-25CGY/PHI/LAK66112637-6144048313.315:38
2025-26 so far
Career2197285157-6342601234720.815:37

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

11 goals and 26 assists in 66 games for 37 points, minus-6, on 15:38 a night between Calgary, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

50.5 per cent at five-on-five, the 58th percentile — the lowest among the club’s top-nine forwards. 83 shots in 66 games is very low volume and 13.3 per cent conversion is well below the 27 per cent that produced 39 goals three seasons ago.

The Finesse Game

Genuinely skilled in a small area. He handles the puck well under pressure, sees a seam, and the release from the circle is quick — 26 assists in 66 games says the playmaking is the more reliable half.

48 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet, so the locations are right and the volume is not. He does not shoot enough to score, and the 39-goal season was built on a shooting rate nobody has ever sustained.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 200, and he does not play to it at all. He does not forecheck, does not win pucks, and is separated from possession easily.

14 penalty minutes over 66 games. He is nowhere near anything, which is why three clubs in two years have not found a place for him.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, seven seasons in Russia, an NHL debut at 26, a 39-goal rookie season, and three organisations since.

At 29 the projection is a middle-six winger who scores 15 and produces 40 points if a club is patient. Los Angeles’s structure is the least forgiving environment available for a player who does not defend.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 804 minutes

Expected goals
50.5%
59th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.6%
70th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 25 against. Expected: 30.9 and 30.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
26th
Numbers
59th

The numbers rank him 33 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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

2024-25 with CGY · 456 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, 2024-25

The club
LAK took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 3.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
804 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nazem Kadri49.5%51.0%49.3%
Anze Kopitar52.5%49.8%48.9%
Adrian Kempe48.6%51.2%49.5%

49.5% together, 51.0% for him apart and 49.3% for Kadri apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

137 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.