Kyle Palmieri

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

16 goals and 17 assists in 55 games — 33 points — at 17:06 a night. Plus-13, 122 shots at 13.1 per cent, three on the power play, three game-winners, 24 penalty minutes.

50.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 58th percentile, with his ice at 44-29 against an expectation of 35.17-34.11 — nine goals better than the chances at the attacking end and five better at the defensive, across 761 minutes.

He started 56.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 80th percentile: 246 attacking draws against 189.

Thirteen seasons, 736 games, 425 points, four organisations.

The Finesse Game

122 shots at a median of 23 feet, and sixteen goals.

Inside twenty: 49 shots on goal and 8 goals, 16.33 per cent. Twenty to forty: 60 shots and 9 goals — 15.00 per cent, against a league forward rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 14 shots and none.

The mid-range number is the file. He is an ordinary finisher from the crease and a well above-average one from the top of the circle, which is what a right-handed one-timer on the off wing is for.

108 wrist shots out of 184 tracked attempts, with 25 tip-ins and 9 slap. 93.6 mph at the 67th percentile, on nine slap shots, so there is nothing in it.

209 career assists against 216 goals. He is a shooter first and always has been, and the 55 games are the reason the totals no longer look like it.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 192, with 24 penalty minutes.

Top speed 21.9 mph, the 30th percentile; 1.1 bursts a game, the 61st; 2.67 miles a game, the 58th.

Below the league in speed and at it in everything else, at thirty-two. The skating has gone and the release has not, which is the usual order.

He goes to the net when the puck is there and takes the punishment for it, and 389 career penalty minutes for a scoring winger is the shadow of a man who has never played a clean game.

Fifty-five games is the fewest he has played in a full season since his first two.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2009 to Anaheim, five seasons there, six in New Jersey, and two and a half here.

The five straight twenty-four-goal-or-better seasons in New Jersey between 2015 and 2020 are what the club paid for; the sixteen in fifty-five games is what it is getting, at a similar rate over fewer games.

He is thirty-two on a club that finished twenty-third in goals for. Even at this rate he is the third-best finisher on the roster, which says as much about the roster as about him.