Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

55

Keegan Kolesar

Vegas Golden Knights Right Wing

Two hundred and fifteen penalty minutes in 275 games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20VGK10000000010.012:06
2020-21VGK4431013-430000466.59:33
2021-22VGK7771724-668110947.412:39
2022-23VGK7481018+6680006312.711:28
2023-24VGK7981018-8490127311.010:52
2024-25 so far
Career275264773-122151222779.411:19

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

79 games, 8 goals and 10 assists for 18 points, 1 shorthanded, 49 penalty minutes, 10:52 a night and minus-8, with 2 game-winners. He took 47.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 829 minutes, the 33rd percentile, and his ice went 24-34 against an expectation of 27.68-31.00.

Four goals of finishing below what the chances were worth and three more conceded than they called for. Twenty-four goals for in 829 minutes is the lowest rate of any Vegas forward who played more than five hundred minutes.

The Finesse Game

103 attempts at a median of 26 feet with 37 per cent of them from inside twenty and 20 per cent from beyond forty, 71 of those on goal, converted at 11.0 per cent against a career 9.39 across 277 shots.

Twenty-six career goals and 47 assists in 275 games. There is very little offence here and none of it is created; the puck arrives after a forecheck and he puts it at the net from wherever he is standing.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 216 and took 49 penalty minutes.

215 career penalty minutes in 275 games. He hits everything, fights when the club needs one, and takes the retaliation penalty afterwards; almost a penalty minute a game in eleven minutes of ice is a rate very few men play at.

The Intangibles

Sixty-ninth overall in 2015 by Columbus, five seasons, and Vegas is his second organisation.

A career minus-12 in 275 games. He was a third-round pick by a club he never played a game for and has been a fourth-line winger here for five seasons.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 829 minutes

Expected goals
47.2%
33rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.9%
27th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 34 against. Expected: 27.7 and 31.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
33rd

The report ranks him 43 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 — 75 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 829 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
VGK took 51.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.2% — 4.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 829 minutes at five-on-five — 41st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nicolas Roy52.6%42.1%50.4%
Brett Howden42.5%51.0%47.4%
Nicolas Hague48.1%46.7%50.6%

52.6% together, 42.1% for him apart and 50.4% for Roy apart. He was worse away from Roy, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Roy 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

103 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.