Ilya Mikheyev

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

53 games for Toronto, 21 goals and 11 assists at 15:16 a night, plus-16, twenty-six penalty minutes, 147 shots. Four of the twenty-one came on the power play and four short-handed. Undrafted, and 146 NHL games and seventy-two points across three seasons out of it.

The Finesse Game

Four short-handed goals in fifty-three games, which is the loudest single line in the file. He scored as many short-handed as on the power play.

10.91 shots per 60 is the 95th percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, at 14.3 per cent, from a 19-foot median at the 15th percentile with fifty-seven per cent from the slot.

High volume from close range on a fifteen-minute shift.

56.2 per cent of the attempts is the 90th percentile and 55.9 per cent of the expected goals the 86th, out of 34.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 39th-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

That is the report. A top-tenth possession share out of the thirty-ninth-hardest chair in hockey, on a club that finished 6th in attempt share — so the club helps and the chair does not.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 192 pounds, 3.86 hits per 60 at the 49th percentile, and twenty-six penalty minutes in fifty-three games.

The Intangibles

16.0 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 11th-most of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, against a 23.4 mph top speed at the 93rd percentile.

Genuinely, measurably fast — and 9.72 miles per 60 at the 56th percentile, so the speed is used in bursts rather than spent covering ground.

His shot is 86.2 mph, the 23rd percentile, which is the one thing arguing against twenty-one goals repeating.

He is 28, undrafted, with seventy-two points in 146 games across three seasons and no season above fifty-three games. The speed, the sprint count, the shot volume, the hard chair and four short-handed goals are five real things. A soft shot, a 14.3 per cent conversion and 146 games in three years are the reasons to be careful with the price.