This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Dmitry Kulikov

Plus-23 and a 53.4 per cent chance share in Minnesota, and fourteen goals of on-ice finishing above expectation that belonged to Kirill Kaprizov.

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

2009-10	FLA	68	3	13	16	-5	32	1	0	0	87	3.5	17:56
2010-11	FLA	72	6	20	26	-5	45	1	0	1	83	7.2	19:57
2011-12	FLA	58	4	24	28	-5	36	2	0	1	104	3.9	21:51
2012-13	FLA	34	3	7	10	-5	22	2	0	2	52	5.8	20:59
2013-14	FLA	81	8	11	19	-26	66	2	1	0	127	6.3	21:42
2014-15	FLA	73	3	19	22	0	48	1	0	0	83	3.6	21:19
2015-16	FLA	74	1	16	17	+8	51	0	0	1	99	1.0	21:02
2016-17	BUF	47	2	3	5	-26	26	1	0	0	42	4.8	21:54
2017-18	WPG	62	3	8	11	+6	22	0	0	1	48	6.3	17:04
2018-19	WPG	57	0	6	6	+4	47	0	0	0	40	0.0	15:40
2019-20	WPG	51	2	8	10	-4	32	0	0	1	54	3.7	20:01
2020-21	NJD/EDM	48	0	4	4	-3	28	0	0	0	51	0.0	19:10
2021-22	MIN	80	7	17	24	+23	39	0	0	2	74	9.5	18:12
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	805	42	156	198	-38	494	10	1	9	944	4.5	19:44

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

With Minnesota. 7 goals and 17 assists in 80 games — 24 points at 18:12 a night, plus-23, on 74 shots and 39 penalty minutes.

53.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,280 minutes, the 78th percentile among defencemen — comfortably the best measured season of a thirteen-year career.

The plus-23 is not that. His ice went 65-42 against an expectation of 50.66-44.23: fourteen goals of scoring above what the chances predicted, and two fewer conceded than they did. Minnesota won 53 games and scored 310, and as a club it finished 49.1 goals above its five-on-five expectation — the highest figure in the league. A defenceman on that club collects a plus-minus he did not build.

The with-and-without is the honest version and it is better than expected. Away from Kirill Kaprizov his own share was 52.6 per cent; away from Kevin Fiala, 51.5; away from Jon Merrill, 54.5. He does not fall apart when the good players leave the ice, which for a man Anaheim signed as a third-pair veteran is more than the contract needs.

The Finesse Game

There is very little. 3.05 shots per 60 is the 12th percentile among defencemen and 74 attempts produced 7 goals at 9.5 per cent — the 96th percentile of conversion, on a volume nobody sustains. Seven goals is more than he scored in the previous three seasons combined and it is not going to happen again.

None of his points came on the power play — the 0th percentile. 156 assists in 805 games is the record of a defenceman who makes the simple pass and gets off the ice.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 212, and this is the job. 494 penalty minutes in 805 games, and 4.12 hits per 60 against 4.25 blocks — he defends with body and with stick in roughly equal measure and he is not moved out of the front of his own net.

He drew 0.66 penalties per 60, the 85th percentile, which is unusual for a defensive defenceman and comes from taking the puck out of the zone through traffic rather than around it.

Top speed 22.2 mph at the 62nd percentile and 8.57 miles per sixty at the 62nd. Ordinary in both, which at 31 is the good news.

The Intangibles

Fourteenth overall in 2009, 805 games across Florida, Buffalo, Winnipeg, Edmonton, New Jersey and Minnesota, and 198 points in all of them.

He is 31 and Anaheim has signed him to play eighteen minutes on a second or third pair, which is precisely what he is. On a blue line that has just lost Lindholm and Manson and is asking a twenty-year-old to play twenty minutes, a competent veteran left shot who does not need sheltering is not a headline and is not nothing.

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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“53.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,280 minutes, the 78th percentile among defencemen”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“494 penalty minutes in 805 games, and 4.12 hits per 60 against 4.25 blocks”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,280 minutes

Expected goals: 53.4%; 79th pct
Shot attempts: 49.9%; 55th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 65 for, 42 against. Expected: 50.7 and 44.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

22nd

Numbers

79th

The numbers rank him 57 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 75th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.36 a game
Distance: 2.60 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.7 mph; 66th 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

2021-22 with MIN · 1280 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: MIN took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.4% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,280 minutes at five-on-five — 89th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jon Merrill	51.9%	54.5%	49.5%
Kirill Kaprizov	55.1%	52.6%	55.2%
Ryan Hartman	53.8%	53.2%	55.5%

51.9% together, 54.5% for him apart and 49.5% for Merrill 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

111 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 61% from beyond forty.