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

Kevin Fiala

The only man on the roster who beats a goaltender from distance, and eleven power-play goals on a unit ranked 22nd.

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

2014-15	NSH	1	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	11:25
2015-16	NSH	5	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	11	9.1	13:09
2016-17	NSH	54	11	5	16	+1	18	0	0	1	114	9.7	13:31
2017-18	NSH	80	23	25	48	+20	26	4	0	4	187	12.3	15:09
2018-19	NSH/MIN	83	13	26	39	-23	36	2	0	2	174	7.5	15:38
2019-20	MIN	64	23	31	54	-1	42	9	0	4	175	13.1	15:24
2020-21	MIN	50	20	20	40	-2	43	6	0	5	162	12.3	16:54
2021-22	MIN	82	33	52	85	+23	52	5	1	7	262	12.6	17:39
2022-23	LAK	69	23	49	72	+2	52	7	0	2	208	11.1	17:36
2023-24	LAK	82	29	44	73	+1	62	11	0	2	225	12.9	18:02
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	570	176	252	428	+20	331	44	1	27	1521	11.6	16:18

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

All 82 games, 29 goals and 44 assists for 73 points, 11 on the power play, 62 penalty minutes, 18:02 a night and plus-1. He took 58.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,162 minutes, the 97th percentile, and his ice went 53-42 against an expectation of 54.50-38.71.

Level with his chances at one end and three more conceded than they called for at the other, on the highest chance share of any forward who played for this club last season. His five-on-five ice went plus-11; the plus-1 overall is the difference between that and the rest of his minutes.

The Finesse Game

225 shots at a median of 30 feet with 29 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 12.9 per cent against a career 11.6.

252 career assists in 570 games. He is the only man on this roster who can beat a goaltender cleanly from the circle, which on a club ranked 22nd on the power play matters more than it should. He carries the puck through the neutral zone and into the zone himself rather than dumping it.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 205 and avoids contact wherever the puck allows it.

62 penalty minutes in 82 games is a real rate and very little of it is physical. He does not forecheck hard, does not win the wall, and retaliates when he has been hit.

The Intangibles

Eleventh overall in 2014 out of St. Gallen, ten seasons, and 428 points in 570 games across three organisations.

He is 28 and this club needs his shot more than it needs anything else it has. Twenty-nine goals on a club that finished sixteenth in scoring is not enough and there is nobody else to ask.

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
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
58.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 52.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.1, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He carries the puck through the neutral zone and into the zone himself rather than dumping it.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck hard, does not win the wall, and retaliates when he has been hit.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck hard, does not win the wall, and retaliates when he has been hit.”
retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not forecheck hard, does not win the wall, and retaliates when he has been hit.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,162 minutes

Expected goals: 58.5%; 97th pct
Shot attempts: 56.1%; 93rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 42 against. Expected: 54.5 and 38.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

51st

Numbers

97th

The numbers rank him 46 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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: 22.3 mph; 55th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.11 a game
Distance: 2.81 miles a game
Hardest shot: 99.9 mph; 99th 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 · 1162 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: LAK took 54.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.5% — 4.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,162 minutes at five-on-five — 79th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Phillip Danault	58.4%	58.6%	56.0%
Trevor Moore	59.0%	57.8%	56.7%
Drew Doughty	54.8%	61.0%	55.1%

58.4% together, 58.6% for him apart and 56.0% for Danault apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

338 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 28% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.