Dmitry Orlov

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

76 games, 12 goals and 23 assists at 20:58 a night, plus-25, forty-four penalty minutes, 127 shots, two power-play goals and four game-winners. Fifty-fifth overall in 2009 by Washington — the second round — ten seasons, 643 games, 237 points.

The Finesse Game

1.272 even-strength points per 60 is the 34th-highest of 202 defencemen, off a 46-foot median shot that is the 17th-shortest at the position.

Twelve goals from 127 shots is 9.4 per cent, the 9th-highest conversion of all 202, and eighteen per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet at the 89th percentile. He goes in, which almost no defenceman does, and it is why the goals are there.

His shot is 101.5 mph, the 4th-hardest of the 192 tracked defencemen — the same figure Alex Ovechkin records, at 5-11 and from the blue line.

4.78 shots per 60 is the 55th percentile and only eleven per cent of his thirty-five points came on the power play, off 0:58 a night. This is a five-on-five defenceman.

52.1 per cent of the expected goals is the 69th percentile and 52.1 per cent of the attempts the 72nd, out of 44.3 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 157th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a genuinely hard chair.

His ice went 64-43 against an expectation of 55.57-51.12. Eight and a half better than the model in front and eight fewer against. A surplus at both ends out of a hard chair is the best pair of numbers any Washington defenceman produced except one.

With Nick Jensen he took 52.8 per cent of the attempts across 1,607 — the largest pairing on the club — and 50.8 per cent apart from him; Jensen apart from Orlov was 46.4.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 215 pounds, and forty-four penalty minutes in seventy-six games — 269 across 643.

4.67 hits per 60 is the 58th percentile and 3.54 blocks the 29th, against 0:45 a night short-handed at the 21st.

0.64 penalties drawn per 60 is the 81st percentile against 0.83 taken.

The Intangibles

21.6 mph is the 33rd percentile among the 192 tracked defencemen, 1.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 44th and 8.27 miles per 60 the 30th. Ordinary or below in all three, at twenty-one minutes a night.

He is 31, a second-round pick, 5-11, with 237 points in 643 games and a career plus-102. The shot, the shot chart, the plus-25 and the two-way surplus out of a hard chair are as complete a case as a second-pair defenceman can make. The skating measurements are the one thing in the file that will decide how long it lasts.