This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Christian Dvorak

A 77.0 mph shot — the third-softest registered in the league — from the second-hardest deployment in it.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	ARI	78	15	18	33	+7	22	2	0	1	88	17.1	15:37
2017-18	ARI	78	15	22	37	-19	22	2	0	2	151	9.9	16:26
2018-19	ARI	20	2	5	7	-2	2	1	0	1	25	8.0	14:23
2019-20	ARI	70	18	20	38	+6	12	6	0	2	134	13.4	16:42
2020-21	ARI	56	17	14	31	-11	12	8	1	4	95	17.9	18:24
2021-22	MTL	56	11	22	33	-19	24	1	0	1	87	12.6	17:22
2022-23	MTL	64	10	18	28	-12	6	0	1	1	88	11.4	16:52
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	422	88	119	207	-50	100	20	2	12	668	13.2	16:41

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

10 goals and 18 assists in 64 games — 28 points — with six penalty minutes. Minus-12, 16:52 a night, 88 shots at 11.4 per cent.

Six penalty minutes in sixty-four games is three minor penalties across three-quarters of a season.

42.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 10th percentile, with his ice at 25-38 against an expectation of 28.16-38.31 — three goals short at the offensive end and exactly the chances at the defensive.

And a good part of the reason: his offensive-zone start share was 39.6 per cent, the 13th percentile. He took 209 attacking draws against 319 defensive ones, and Savard is the only other Montreal player given the same share. That is the hardest deployment of any forward on the club and it is the frame for every other number in this report.

Seven seasons, 422 games, 207 points.

The Finesse Game

88 shots at a median of 18 feet, 54 per cent from inside twenty and 14 per cent from beyond forty.

Beyond forty: 14 shots on goal, 1 goal. Inside forty: 74 shots, 9 goals, 12.16 per cent.

Fourteen long shots in sixty-four games is a very disciplined chart, and a median of eighteen feet is one of the closest on the club. He takes what the assignment allows.

77.02 mph is the third-softest registered shot in the league among skaters who played forty games, six hundredths of a mile an hour behind Nils Aman and nine tenths behind Isac Lundestrom at the floor. He took three slap shots all year, which is most of the explanation; the measurement is a slap-shot reading and a man who never slaps registers at the floor. What survives is 88 goals in 422 games.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 190, and six penalty minutes.

Top speed 23.2 mph, the 90th percentile; bursts 1.6 a game, the 76th. Those are the two best numbers in his file, and they are genuinely good ones — he is one of the quicker forwards Montreal dressed.

2.68 miles a game, the 60th.

He is not a heavy centre and does not win pucks by force. What he does is arrive first and take the puck away with the stick, and six penalty minutes across sixty-four games of the hardest forward shifts on the club is a remarkable piece of discipline.

The Intangibles

Fifty-eighth overall in 2014 to Arizona out of London, five seasons there, and two in Montreal.

He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills the penalty and gives the club its only relief from Suzuki, and he does it at the 13th percentile of zone starts.

The honest reading is that the 10th-percentile chance share is mostly the assignment and partly the club, and that a 28-point centre doing this job is worth more than the point total suggests. The reservation is the injuries: he has played more than seventy games twice in seven seasons.

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
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.09 penalty minutes a game over 64, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills the penalty and gives the club its only relief from Suzuki, and he does it at the 13th percentile of zone starts.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills the penalty and gives the club its only relief from Suzuki, and he does it at the 13th percentile of zone starts.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“What he does is arrive first and take the puck away with the stick, and six penalty minutes across sixty-four games of the hardest forward shifts on the club is a remarkable piece of discipline.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 813 minutes

Expected goals: 42.4%; 10th pct
Shot attempts: 44.1%; 12th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 38 against. Expected: 28.2 and 38.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

34th

Numbers

10th

The report ranks him 24 points above where the numbers do. 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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, 2022-23 · 64 games

Top speed: 23.2 mph; 92nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.61 a game
Distance: 2.68 miles a game
Hardest shot: 77.0 mph; 13th pct

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

2022-23 · 813 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, 2022-23

The club: MTL took 44.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.4% — 1.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 813 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Evgenii Dadonov	42.6%	42.2%	52.8%
Jordan Harris	51.3%	38.1%	45.6%
Brendan Gallagher	51.1%	38.7%	48.1%

42.6% together, 42.2% for him apart and 52.8% for Dadonov apart. Dadonov was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

117 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.