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

Kirill Kaprizov

One hundred and sixty goals in 278 games, at a career 16.26 per cent, on a club that creates nothing.

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

2020-21	MIN	55	27	24	51	+10	16	8	0	3	157	17.2	18:18
2021-22	MIN	81	47	61	108	+27	34	14	0	5	289	16.3	19:06
2022-23	MIN	67	40	35	75	+4	45	17	0	6	261	15.3	21:07
2023-24	MIN	75	46	50	96	+11	36	19	0	8	277	16.6	21:35
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	278	160	170	330	+52	131	58	0	22	984	16.3	20:06

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

75 games, 46 goals and 50 assists for 96 points, 19 on the power play, 36 penalty minutes, 21:35 a night and plus-11. He took 55.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,212 minutes, the 90th percentile, and his ice went 72-56 against an expectation of 58.60-46.73.

Thirteen goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and nine more conceded than they called for. The 46 goals were ninth in the league and the 96 points eleventh, in seventy-five games, on the twenty-sixth-best chance creation in hockey.

The Finesse Game

410 attempts at a median of 26 feet with 38 per cent from inside 20, converted at 16.6 per cent against a career 16.26 across 984 shots.

170 career assists in 278 games. The shot is the best thing on this roster by a distance and the career conversion rate says it is the player rather than a run of luck. He carries the puck into the zone himself, which on a club with nobody else who does is most of how the offence starts.

The Physical Game

He is 5-10 and 202 and protects the puck by turning rather than by leaning.

36 penalty minutes in 75 games at twenty-one and a half a night is a low rate. He is not physical and he does not need to be, but he takes a beating below the goal line and keeps going back.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick in 2015 out of Novokuznetsk, four seasons since arriving from Russia at 23, and 330 points in 278 games.

He is 27 and has scored 40 or more three times in four seasons. Everything this club does at the offensive end runs through one man, and there is nothing behind him on the nights he does not play.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
55.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.8% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.8, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:10 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He carries the puck into the zone himself, which on a club with nobody else who does is most of how the offence starts.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 5-10 and 202 and protects the puck by turning rather than by leaning.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is not physical and he does not need to be, but he takes a beating below the goal line and keeps going back.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,212 minutes

Expected goals: 55.6%; 90th pct
Shot attempts: 52.4%; 75th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 72 for, 56 against. Expected: 58.6 and 46.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

97th

Numbers

90th

The two rank him within 7 points of one another. 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.

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 — 82 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 · 75 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 74th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.39 a game
Distance: 3.34 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.8 mph; 75th 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 · 1212 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: MIN took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.6% — 4.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,212 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Matt Boldy	60.6%	51.2%	50.8%
Brock Faber	55.4%	55.8%	47.5%
Mats Zuccarello	52.5%	57.7%	52.3%

60.6% together, 51.2% for him apart and 50.8% for Boldy apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

410 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 45 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.