This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jason Zucker
Arizona Coyotes Left Wing
Twenty-seven goals at thirty-one, and the best five-on-five share of any forward on the club he left.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | MIN | 6 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0 | 11:02 |
| 2012-13 | MIN | 20 | 4 | 1 | 5 | +4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 11.8 | 11:16 |
| 2013-14 | MIN | 21 | 4 | 1 | 5 | +2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 40 | 10.0 | 12:59 |
| 2014-15 | MIN | 51 | 21 | 5 | 26 | -9 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 124 | 16.9 | 15:04 |
| 2015-16 | MIN | 71 | 13 | 10 | 23 | -4 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 158 | 8.2 | 15:35 |
| 2016-17 | MIN | 79 | 22 | 25 | 47 | +34 | 30 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 172 | 12.8 | 15:17 |
| 2017-18 | MIN | 82 | 33 | 31 | 64 | +8 | 44 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 222 | 14.9 | 16:58 |
| 2018-19 | MIN | 81 | 21 | 21 | 42 | -9 | 28 | 7 | 0 | 5 | 214 | 9.8 | 17:05 |
| 2019-20 | MIN/PIT | 60 | 20 | 21 | 41 | -4 | 21 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 111 | 18.0 | 16:20 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 38 | 9 | 9 | 18 | -8 | 21 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 13.4 | 15:41 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 41 | 8 | 9 | 17 | -2 | 15 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 102 | 7.8 | 14:49 |
| 2022-23 | PIT | 78 | 27 | 21 | 48 | -4 | 47 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 197 | 13.7 | 15:39 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 628 | 182 | 156 | 338 | +6 | 256 | 29 | 3 | 30 | 1451 | 12.5 | 15:39 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
27 goals and 21 assists in 78 games for Pittsburgh — 48 points at 15:39 a night, minus-4, with 5 game-winners on 197 shots, converting at 13.71 per cent, and 47 penalty minutes.
55.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,105 minutes, the 89th percentile — by a distance the best number anybody on this roster brought with them. His ice went 54-56 against an expectation of 59.85-47.99, which is eight more goals conceded than the chances predicted and is Pittsburgh’s goaltending rather than his defending.
The Finesse Game
197 attempts at a median of 19 feet with 52 per cent from inside 20 and 14 per cent from beyond 40, off a 94.8 mph shot at the 76th percentile.
He is a shooter who shoots from where goals are scored and he is hard enough to beat a goaltender when he gets there. 182 goals in 628 games. The passing is the ordinary part — 156 career assists against 182 goals — and he is not the man who creates the play.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 198, built low, and he goes to the net and stays there. 256 penalty minutes in 628 games.
The skating is good and still is at 31: 22.7 mph at the 72nd percentile with 1.7 bursts a game at the 78th. He forechecks hard and he arrives on the puck, which is what has kept him a top-nine winger for twelve years.
The Intangibles
Fifty-ninth overall in 2010, twelve seasons, 628 games, 338 points and a reputation as one of the more decent men in the sport — he and his wife have raised a great deal of money for children’s hospitals.
He is 31, arriving on a club that will not make the playoffs, after a season that says he can still play on one that would. He is the most obvious deadline asset Arizona has, and the value of the season is whatever a contender pays for him in March.
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
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
69% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He forechecks hard and he arrives on the puck”
“He is a shooter who shoots from where goals are scored and he is hard enough to beat a goaltender when he gets there.”
“The passing is the ordinary part — 156 career assists against 182 goals — and he is not the man who creates the play.”
“he and his wife have raised a great deal of money for children's hospitals”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,105 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.5%
- 89th pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.4%
- 92nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 56 against. Expected: 59.9 and 48.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 41 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 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, 2022-23 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 77th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.68 a game
- Distance
- 2.54 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.8 mph
- 91st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 with PIT · 1105 minutes at five-on-five
- Bryan Rust43%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- PIT took 53.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.5% — 2.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,105 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evgeni Malkin | 55.6% | 54.7% | 51.1% |
| Bryan Rust | 59.9% | 52.3% | 49.0% |
| Rickard Rakell | 50.2% | 59.0% | 57.1% |
55.6% together, 54.7% for him apart and 51.1% for Malkin apart. Malkin was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Malkin 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
277 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.