This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →

Evander Kane

The 7th-worst penalty differential of the 393 qualified forwards, and 41.5 per cent of the chances away from Connor McDavid.

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

2009-10	ATL	66	14	12	26	+2	62	0	1	3	127	11.0	14:00
2010-11	ATL	73	19	24	43	-12	68	4	0	2	234	8.1	17:52
2011-12	WPG	74	30	27	57	+11	53	6	0	4	287	10.4	17:31
2012-13	WPG	48	17	16	33	-3	80	2	0	4	190	8.9	20:27
2013-14	WPG	63	19	22	41	-7	66	1	2	4	250	7.6	20:17
2014-15	WPG	37	10	12	22	-1	56	4	1	1	126	7.9	19:19
2015-16	BUF	65	20	15	35	-14	91	2	1	3	271	7.4	21:02
2016-17	BUF	70	28	15	43	-17	113	3	0	5	260	10.8	19:12
2017-18	BUF/SJS	78	29	25	54	-9	82	3	4	2	307	9.4	19:34
2018-19	SJS	75	30	26	56	-4	153	5	1	1	268	11.2	18:25
2019-20	SJS	64	26	21	47	-12	122	14	2	6	216	12.0	19:32
2020-21	SJS	56	22	27	49	-1	42	3	2	2	194	11.3	20:12
2021-22	EDM	43	22	17	39	+25	60	3	2	3	152	14.5	19:27
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	812	286	259	545	-42	1048	50	16	40	2882	9.9	18:53

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

22 goals and 17 assists in 43 games — 39 points and a plus-25 at 19:27 a night, the 91st percentile among forwards — with 60 penalty minutes.

51.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 700 minutes, the 60th percentile. His ice went 39-22 against an expectation of 33.38-31.97 — six more goals for than the chances promised and ten fewer against, which is a very large gap on 700 minutes and is where the plus-25 comes from.

Fifteen playoff games for 13 goals — the most of any Oiler.

The Finesse Game

10.90 shots per 60 is the 95th percentile among forwards — the highest volume on the club, McDavid included. Twenty-two goals on 152 shots is 14.5 per cent, the 78th percentile.

52 per cent came from the slot at a median of 24 feet — ordinary locations, extraordinary volume, which is a repeatable way to score twenty-plus.

2.68 even-strength points per 60 is the 87th percentile with only 10 per cent of his points on the power play, the 38th. On the best power play in the league he is not on it, and 39 points in 43 games arrived anyway.

1.15 takeaways per 60 is the 18th percentile.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 218. 9.68 hits per 60 is the 88th percentile among forwards and 0.79 blocks is the 6th. He hits and he does not defend.

1.87 penalties taken per 60 is the 97th percentile and drawn minus taken is minus-0.789 — the 7th-worst of the 393 qualified forwards. Sixty minutes in forty-three games, and 1,048 in an 812-game career. On a club that killed penalties at the 27th-best rate in the league, that is a direct and measurable cost.

23.1 mph is the 85th percentile and 5.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 the 52nd, with 9.36 miles per 60 at the 26th. He is fast and he does not cover much ground — a straight-line power forward, which is what the shot volume says too.

The Intangibles

Fourth overall in 2009, and 812 NHL games at 31 with 286 goals and a career minus-42.

The with-and-without-you file is the harshest in the book. With Connor McDavid he took 56.3 per cent of the chances over 900 attempts. Without him, 41.5 over 503. Five hundred attempts is not a fragment; it is the better part of ten hours of hockey, and 41.5 per cent is a fourth-line number.

McDavid away from him is at 57.9.

Twenty-two goals in forty-three games and thirteen in fifteen playoff games are real and they were scored beside the best player alive. What the file cannot tell you is what he is worth on any other line, and the one measurement of it says: not much.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:17 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits and he does not defend.”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“On a club that killed penalties at the 27th-best rate in the league, that is a direct and measurable cost.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is fast and he does not cover much ground”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 700 minutes

Expected goals: 51.1%; 63rd pct
Shot attempts: 52.6%; 75th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 22 against. Expected: 33.4 and 32.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

78th

Numbers

63rd

The two rank him within 15 points of one another. 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.

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 — 67 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 · 43 games

Top speed: 23.1 mph; 90th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.70 a game
Distance: 3.03 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.4 mph; 74th 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 · 700 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: EDM took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: 700 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Connor McDavid	56.3%	41.5%	57.9%
Kailer Yamamoto	52.2%	49.9%	46.4%
Darnell Nurse	47.4%	53.4%	54.5%

56.3% together, 41.5% for him apart and 57.9% for McDavid apart. He was worse away from McDavid, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than McDavid did.

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

206 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.