Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

23

Marco Rossi

Minnesota Wild Center

60 points at 24 from 5-9 and 182 pounds, with 53 per cent of his shots taken from inside 20 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22MIN2000-1400050.015:35
2022-23MIN19011-78000130.012:31
2023-24MIN82211940-44720216712.616:44
2024-25MIN82243660+32670313617.618:15
2025-26 so far
Career1854556101-98590532114.016:58

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

24 goals and 36 assists in 82 games for 60 points, plus-3, on 18:15 a night.

51.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 69th percentile. 53 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 18 — the most interior profile among the club’s forwards — and 17.6 per cent conversion on only 136 attempts.

His on-ice goals were 28-35 against an expected 47.5-44.2, which is 20 goals of finishing that did not arrive at one end.

The Finesse Game

A small centre who has decided the only way to survive is to play inside, and it works. He goes to the net, takes pucks off sticks below the goal line, and the passing out of those areas is genuinely good — 36 assists on this club is a real total.

136 shots is a low volume and the 17.6 per cent rate will fall. What should not fall is the location profile, which is the most encouraging thing about him: a man this size getting to the paint 53 per cent of the time is doing something repeatable.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 182, and among the smallest centres in the league. He competes far harder than the frame suggests, wins more pucks than he should, and takes an enormous amount of punishment at the net front.

26 penalty minutes over 82 games. Two consecutive full seasons at this size playing this way is a genuine achievement.

The Intangibles

A 9th overall pick, a serious illness that cost him most of two development years, and a long restricted free agency that was conducted in public.

At 24 the projection is a second-line centre who scores 20 and defends. The club’s willingness to argue about his value at length says more about the organisation than about the player.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,196 minutes

Expected goals
51.8%
70th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.8%
50th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 28 for, 35 against. Expected: 47.5 and 44.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
87th
Numbers
70th

The two rank him within 17 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 80 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1196 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, 2024-25

The club
MIN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 2.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,196 minutes at five-on-five — 84th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mats Zuccarello50.2%54.0%47.4%
Matt Boldy52.3%51.3%55.0%
Brock Faber51.1%52.4%44.4%

50.2% together, 54.0% for him apart and 47.4% for Zuccarello apart. He was better away from Zuccarello, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Zuccarello.

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

207 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.