This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mark Kastelic
Ottawa Senators Center
Eighty-six attacking-zone starts against 268 — the 1st percentile of this book.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | OTT | 16 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -1 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 18.2 | 9:11 |
| 2022-23 | OTT | 65 | 7 | 4 | 11 | -6 | 102 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 73 | 9.6 | 8:54 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 81 | 9 | 6 | 15 | -7 | 116 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 84 | 10.7 | 8:57 |
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
7 goals and 4 assists in 65 games — 11 points — at 8:54 a night. Minus-6, 73 shots at 9.6 per cent, 102 penalty minutes.
And the deployment, which is the most extreme on this roster and one of the most extreme anywhere. He was on the ice for 86 five-on-five draws in the attacking zone and 268 in his own — 24.3 per cent, the 1st percentile of this book.
What came back was 49.5 per cent of the expected goals across 534 minutes, the 48th percentile. A league-average chance share out of the first percentile of deployment is the best result relative to zone starts in this chapter and one of the best in the edition.
His ice finished 17-23 against an expectation of 19.07-19.43.
Two seasons, 81 games, 15 points.
The Finesse Game
73 shots at a median of 19 feet, and seven goals at 9.6 per cent.
Inside twenty: 41 shots on goal and 6 goals, 14.63 per cent, a little under the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 16 shots and 1 goal. Beyond forty: 16 shots and none.
Seven goals from nine minutes a night at the wrong end of the rink is more than the role asks for.
50 wrist shots and 18 backhands out of 100 tracked attempts, with one slap shot. Everything is close, deflected or from below the goal line.
Four assists in sixty-five games. There is no playmaking here and the job does not include any.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 234 pounds, and the physical file is the whole of it.
Top speed 22.3 mph, the 52nd percentile; 1.5 bursts a game, the 73rd; 1.53 miles a game, the 3rd percentile.
Nine minutes a night in very short shifts, most of them sprints out of his own end — the same tracking signature this book found in Michael McLeod and Julien Gauthier, and it is what the role produces rather than what the player is.
He hits everything, wins draws in his own end, and fights. At 234 pounds he is the heaviest forward on this roster and the club uses him accordingly.
What the 1st-percentile deployment says is that a coaching staff will send this line out with the puck in the wrong end and expect to get it back, and the chance share says the expectation is met.
The Intangibles
One hundred and twenty-fifth overall in 2019, the fifth round, and 81 games across two seasons.
Eleven points in sixty-five games at twenty-four, on nine minutes a night.
That is a fourth-line centre’s line and the file should not pretend to more. What is genuinely valuable, and easy to miss, is the deployment-adjusted record: almost nobody in this book is given a harder shift and comes back level.
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
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
24% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He hits everything, wins draws in his own end, and fights.”
“What the 1st-percentile deployment says is that a coaching staff will send this line out with the puck in the wrong end and expect to get it back, and the chance share says the expectation is met.”
“At 234 pounds he is the heaviest forward on this roster and the club uses him accordingly.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 534 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.5%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48%
- 38th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 17 for, 23 against. Expected: 19.1 and 19.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 — 64 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 · 65 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.34 a game
- Distance
- 1.53 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.2 mph
- 63rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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 · 534 minutes at five-on-five
- Parker Kelly29%
- Derick Brassardoff the roster29%
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
- OTT took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.5% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 534 minutes at five-on-five — 18th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austin Watson | 47.0% | 54.6% | 39.8% |
| Nick Holden | 49.8% | 49.4% | 50.6% |
| Parker Kelly | 47.0% | 50.6% | 41.8% |
47.0% together, 54.6% for him apart and 39.8% for Watson apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Watson behind.
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
100 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.