This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Evgeni Malkin

Two goals short of five hundred, with the third-most career points, power-play goals and penalty minutes in this edition.

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

2006-07	PIT	78	33	52	85	+2	80	16	0	6	242	13.6	19:10
2007-08	PIT	82	47	59	106	+16	78	17	0	5	272	17.3	21:19
2008-09	PIT	82	35	78	113	+17	80	14	2	4	290	12.1	22:31
2009-10	PIT	67	28	49	77	-6	100	13	2	7	268	10.4	20:51
2010-11	PIT	43	15	22	37	-4	18	5	0	3	182	8.2	19:49
2011-12	PIT	75	50	59	109	+18	70	12	0	9	339	14.8	21:01
2012-13	PIT	31	9	24	33	+5	36	4	0	3	99	9.1	19:42
2013-14	PIT	60	23	49	72	+10	62	7	0	3	191	12.0	20:04
2014-15	PIT	69	28	42	70	-2	60	9	0	4	212	13.2	18:58
2015-16	PIT	57	27	31	58	+1	65	11	0	6	162	16.7	19:22
2016-17	PIT	62	33	39	72	+18	77	11	0	6	191	17.3	18:37
2017-18	PIT	78	42	56	98	+16	87	14	0	7	239	17.6	18:59
2018-19	PIT	68	21	51	72	-25	89	9	0	5	187	11.2	18:48
2019-20	PIT	55	25	49	74	+7	58	7	0	5	171	14.6	19:31
2020-21	PIT	33	8	20	28	-4	24	4	0	0	72	11.1	17:44
2021-22	PIT	41	20	22	42	-10	24	9	0	5	129	15.5	18:20
2022-23	PIT	82	27	56	83	-12	82	11	0	3	240	11.3	18:35
2023-24	PIT	82	27	40	67	+5	70	6	0	2	199	13.6	18:35
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1145	498	798	1296	+52	1160	179	4	83	3685	13.5	19:40

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

82 games, 27 goals and 40 assists for 67 points, 6 on the power play, 70 penalty minutes, 18:35 a night and plus-5, with 2 game-winners. He took 53.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,179 minutes, the 77th percentile, and his ice went 57-48 against an expectation of 56.59-49.74.

Level with the chances at both ends, which is the least dramatic season he has had. Eighty-two games is the second time in three years he has played every one of them.

The Finesse Game

273 attempts at a median of 28 feet with 35 per cent of them from inside twenty, 193 of those on goal, converted at 13.6 per cent against a career 13.51 across 3,685 shots.

498 career goals and 798 assists. The hands in traffic are what have survived; he still takes a puck into two men and comes out the other side with it, and the release off the wrong foot is unchanged. 179 career power-play goals is the third-highest total in this edition.

The Physical Game

He is 6-5 and 213 and took 70 penalty minutes.

1,160 career penalty minutes in 1,145 games — the third-most in this edition, behind Tom Wilson and Corey Perry. He plays angry when the game turns, retaliates rather than absorbs, and a good deal of that total is the second penalty rather than the first.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2004, eighteen seasons, all of them in Pittsburgh, and 1,296 points in 1,145 games — third in this edition.

He is 38 and two goals short of five hundred. Whatever the club decides to become, it will happen with him and Crosby still in the room, because neither of them has ever played anywhere else.

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“The hands in traffic are what have survived; he still takes a puck into two men and comes out the other side with it, and the release off the wrong foot is unchanged.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“He plays angry when the game turns, retaliates rather than absorbs, and a good deal of that total is the second penalty rather than the first.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“1,160 career penalty minutes in 1,145 games — the third-most in this edition, behind Tom Wilson and Corey Perry.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,179 minutes

Expected goals: 53.2%; 77th pct
Shot attempts: 52.1%; 73rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 57 for, 48 against. Expected: 56.6 and 49.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

98th

Numbers

77th

The report ranks him 21 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 84 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 16th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.59 a game
Distance: 3.17 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.7 mph; 80th 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 · 1179 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: PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.2% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,179 minutes at five-on-five — 81st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Reilly Smith	54.2%	52.3%	49.9%
Erik Karlsson	55.3%	51.3%	53.3%
Rickard Rakell	54.5%	52.4%	53.4%

54.2% together, 52.3% for him apart and 49.9% for Smith apart. Smith was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Smith 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

273 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 27% from beyond forty.