Artemi Panarin

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

29 goals and 63 assists in 82 games — 92 points — at 19:36 a night. Plus-4, 204 shots at 14.2 per cent, nine on the power play, 36 penalty minutes.

51.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 61st percentile, with his ice at 63-53 against an expectation of 53.66-51.24 — nine goals better than the chances at the attacking end, which is what a finishing line does.

He started 53.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 64th percentile.

Eight seasons, 590 games, 661 points, and he was never drafted.

The Finesse Game

204 shots at a median of 33 feet, and the distance chart is where the file lives.

Twenty to forty feet: 98 shots on goal and 19 goals — 19.39 per cent, against a league forward rate of 11.05. Inside twenty: 51 shots and 12 goals, 23.53 per cent. Beyond forty: 55 shots and 2 goals.

Nearly half of what he puts on goal comes from the mid-slot and he converts it at three-quarters again the league’s rate. That is not a volume shooter and it is not a crease finisher; it is a man who arrives at the top of the circle with the puck on his stick and a goaltender who has already moved.

173 wrist shots and 54 snap out of 306 tracked attempts, with 47 slap. 91.9 mph at the 59th percentile.

And the other half. 445 career assists in 590 games. The puck goes to him on the half-wall and everything the Rangers do with it after that is his decision.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 176 pounds, with 36 penalty minutes.

Top speed 22.1 mph, the 41st percentile; 0.7 bursts a game, the 39th; 3.03 miles a game, the 81st.

Ordinary speed on high mileage, at thirty-one. He is not fast and never was; what he has is edges, a change of pace inside two strides, and the ability to hold the puck through contact that a 176-pound winger has no business having.

He does not forecheck, does not win pucks along the wall and is not on the penalty kill. On a club that finished twenty-first in even-strength chance creation, that is a real cost and the club pays it without complaint.

What he does instead is protect the puck below the goal line and wait, which is a physical skill that no measurement in this book can see.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Korkino, and a first NHL season at twenty-four that produced 77 points.

Eight seasons, three clubs, and not one of them below 74 points in a full schedule. The career line is 216 goals and 445 assists in 590 games and a plus-138.

He is thirty-one, on the largest contract this club has ever given a forward, and the honest projection is that the mid-range shooting comes down before the passing does. What the file cannot resolve is a 51.2 per cent chance share from a man scoring at better than a point a game — the goals are real and the ice is barely tilted, and both of those have been true for four seasons here.