This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Kirill Marchenko

Twenty-one goals and four assists — the most lopsided scoring line of any rookie in this book.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI
2022-23	CBJ	59	21	4	25	-23	16	7	0	1	131	16.0	16:11
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	59	21	4	25	-23	16	7	0	1	131	16.0	16:11

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

21 goals and 4 assists in 59 games, minus-23, 16:11 a night, 131 shots at 16.0 per cent — a rookie season at 22.

Twenty-one goals and four assists. Five of every six points he registered were goals he scored himself, on a club that finished 30th in the league in scoring.

45.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 20th percentile, with his ice at 25-39 against an expectation of 29.22-35.67. The defensive half of his game does not yet exist.

The Finesse Game

131 shots at a median of 25 feet, 38 per cent from inside twenty and only 13 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside forty: 113 shots, 22 goals, 19.47 per cent — the highest close-range conversion rate of any forward on this roster. Beyond forty: 17 shots, none.

16.0 per cent overall in a rookie year is high enough to expect regression, and the distribution is the reason to expect less of it than usual: he is not scoring from range, he is scoring from the slot, and slot conversion is the more repeatable of the two.

Six wrap-arounds in the shot-type record, which for a 6-3 winger is an unusual signature and reads as a player who works from below the goal line.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 201. 22.1 mph at the 39th percentile, 2.75 miles a game at the 64th, 1.3 bursts a game at the 68th — an ordinary tracking line for a big winger, which is not a criticism at 22.

16 penalty minutes in 59 games. He plays through contact rather than seeking it and has not yet been asked to defend.

The Intangibles

49th overall in 2018, and four seasons in Russia before crossing at 22 — an unusual path for a second-round pick and the reason he arrived as a finished shooter rather than a project.

Columbus scored 214 goals last season, fewest but one in the league, and he scored 21 of them in 59 games. On this roster that is the most encouraging single fact available.

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.

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.

net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“he is not scoring from range, he is scoring from the slot, and slot conversion is the more repeatable of the two”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“Five of every six points he registered were goals he scored himself, on a club that finished 30th in the league in scoring.”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“The defensive half of his game does not yet exist.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 774 minutes

Expected goals: 45%; 21st pct
Shot attempts: 45.9%; 23rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 39 against. Expected: 29.2 and 35.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

29th

Numbers

21st

The two rank him within 8 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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 · 59 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 47th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.34 a game
Distance: 2.75 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.9 mph; 61st 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

2022-23 · 774 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, 2022-23

The club: CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.0% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 774 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Johnny Gaudreau	44.2%	45.8%	49.3%
Boone Jenner	43.5%	46.1%	49.7%
Andrew Peeke	48.3%	43.4%	42.5%

44.2% together, 45.8% for him apart and 49.3% for Gaudreau apart. Gaudreau was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

185 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.