This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Dmitry Kulikov

Nine hundred and forty-eight games, 591 career penalty minutes, and back where he was drafted fifteen years ago.

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	ANA/PIT	67	3	13	16	-13	34	0	0	0	84	3.6	19:29
2023-24	FLA	76	1	19	20	+15	63	0	0	0	74	1.4	16:31
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	948	46	188	234	-36	591	10	1	9	1102	4.2	19:27

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

76 games, 1 goal and 19 assists for 20 points, 63 penalty minutes, 16:31 a night and plus-15. He took 53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,096 minutes, the 81st percentile, and his ice went 39-35 against an expectation of 45.25-38.87.

Six goals of scoring that did not arrive and four fewer conceded than the chances called for. Twenty points at 33 on the third pairing of a Stanley Cup club is a useful season and nothing more than that.

The Finesse Game

74 shots at a median of 54 feet with 72 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 1.4 per cent. One goal in 76 games and 46 in 948 career games.

188 career assists in 948 games. He makes the safe first pass and has done for fifteen years. There is no carrying and there has not been since he was 25.

The Physical Game

He finishes checks at 6-1 and 212 and is unpleasant along the wall.

591 career penalty minutes in 948 games. He clears the front of his own net, blocks shots, and takes the second penalty about as often as the first.

The Intangibles

Fourteenth overall in 2009 by Florida, fifteen seasons and a great many organisations, and 948 games. He came back to the club that drafted him at 32 and won a Stanley Cup with it.

A career minus-36 across fifteen years describes the clubs more than the player. He is 33 and this is the third pairing, and on this roster that is a compliment.

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.

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.

punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He finishes checks at 6-1 and 212 and is unpleasant along the wall.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He clears the front of his own net, blocks shots, and takes the second penalty about as often as the first.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He clears the front of his own net, blocks shots, and takes the second penalty about as often as the first.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He clears the front of his own net, blocks shots, and takes the second penalty about as often as the first.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,096 minutes

Expected goals: 53.8%; 81st pct
Shot attempts: 54.5%; 87th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 35 against. Expected: 45.3 and 38.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

81st

The numbers rank him 64 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2023-24 · 76 games

Top speed: 21.5 mph; 43rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.24 a game
Distance: 2.44 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.2 mph; 73rd 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

2023-24 · 1096 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, 2023-24

The club: FLA took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,096 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Oliver Ekman-Larsson	53.3%	54.2%	54.3%
Niko Mikkola	53.0%	54.2%	51.3%
Eetu Luostarinen	57.9%	51.8%	51.8%

53.3% together, 54.2% for him apart and 54.3% for Ekman-Larsson 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

115 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 63 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.