Armchair Hockey Scout

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2024-25 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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86

Kirill Marchenko

Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing

Forty-four goals in 137 NHL games, sixteen of them on the power play.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23CBJ5921425-231670113116.016:11
2023-24CBJ78231942-51490119311.916:25
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—137442367-2830160232413.616:19

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

23 goals and 19 assists in 78 games — 42 points at 16:25 a night, minus-5, with 9 power-play goals on 193 shots, converting at 11.92 per cent, and 14 penalty minutes.

46.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,039 minutes, the 27th percentile. His ice went 49-35 against an expectation of 40.60-47.51 — seven goals scored above expectation and three conceded above it.

The Finesse Game

193 attempts at a median of 28 feet, with 35 per cent from inside 20 and 17 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 11.92 per cent against a career 13.58.

The release is the reason he is here — heavy and quick from the middle distance, and it works from the far circle on a power play, which is where sixteen of his forty-four career goals have come from.

19 assists on 42 points. He is a shooter and the passing is what happens when the shot is covered.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 201 and light for the height. He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody and he protects the puck with reach rather than by winning a battle.

14 penalty minutes in 78 games and 30 in 137 for his career is one of the lowest rates on the roster. He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

Forty-ninth overall in 2018, out of Yekaterinburg, and 137 games and 67 points at 24 after four seasons in Russia before he came.

Forty-four goals in 137 NHL games from a second-round pick who arrived at 22 is the best piece of drafting on a roster carrying nine top-ten picks, and he is the club’s most reliable finisher.

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
  • 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

  • playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “19 assists on 42 points. **He is a shooter and the passing is what happens when the shot is covered.**”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody and he protects the puck with reach rather than by winning a battle.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “He forechecks honestly without punishing anybody and he protects the puck with reach rather than by winning a battle.”

  • agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation

    “He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”

  • retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty

    “He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,039 minutes

Expected goals
46.1%
27th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.1%
36th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 35 against. Expected: 40.6 and 47.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
51st
Numbers
27th

The report ranks him 24 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 — 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 · 78 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
62nd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
1.81 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
2.80 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
84.9 mph
38th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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 · 1039 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
CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.1% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 1,039 minutes at five-on-five — 63rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Dmitri Voronkov50.4%42.0%48.4%
Zach Werenski48.1%44.8%48.1%
Ivan Provorov43.5%47.5%46.0%

50.4% together, 42.0% for him apart and 48.4% for Voronkov apart. He was worse away from Voronkov, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Voronkov 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

255 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.