This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mark Kastelic
Boston Bruins Center
Six foot four, 234 pounds, seven minutes and forty-three seconds a night.
| 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 | OTT | 63 | 5 | 5 | 10 | -5 | 63 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 8.3 | 7:43 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 144 | 14 | 11 | 25 | -12 | 179 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 144 | 9.7 | 8:25 |
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
5 goals and 5 assists in 63 games for Ottawa — 10 points at 7:43 a night, minus-5, on 60 shots with 63 penalty minutes.
46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 476 minutes, the 31st percentile. His ice went 15-19 against an expectation of 15.15-17.17 — a ledger inside two goals of the chances at both ends, in a fourth-line role.
The Finesse Game
60 attempts at a median of 23 feet, with 47 per cent from inside 20 and 13 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 8.33 per cent. Fourteen goals in 144 NHL games.
Five assists. He does not create, he does not carry the puck and he is not asked to — the job is to win a defensive-zone draw, put the puck behind the defence and change.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 234, and this is the entire report. He finishes every check and he hurts people, and he leads most lineups he is in for hits despite playing under eight minutes.
63 penalty minutes in 63 games and 179 in 144 for his career. He takes liberties and he answers for them, and he is the fourth-line deterrent a club that plays in this division has decided it needs.
He is trusted a man short and he wins the draw that begins the shift.
The Intangibles
A hundred and twenty-fifth overall in 2019, and 144 NHL games at 25 after a long junior career in the Western league.
He arrived from Ottawa in the trade that sent Linus Ullmark away. A fifth-round pick who becomes an NHL fourth-line centre by being 234 pounds and willing is a real career, and on a club spending 5:30 a game shorthanded, sixty-three penalty minutes in sixty-three games is the part to watch.
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.
“**He finishes every check and he hurts people**, and he leads most lineups he is in for hits despite playing under eight minutes.”
“**He finishes every check and he hurts people**, and he leads most lineups he is in for hits despite playing under eight minutes.”
“**6-4 and 234, and this is the entire report.**”
“**He takes liberties and he answers for them**, and he is the fourth-line deterrent a club that plays in this division has decided it needs.”
“**He is trusted a man short** and he wins the draw that begins the shift.”
“**He is trusted a man short** and he wins the draw that begins the shift.”
“**He does not create, he does not carry the puck and he is not asked to** — the job is to win a defensive-zone draw, put the puck behind the defence and change.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 476 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 32nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.2%
- 37th 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: 15 for, 19 against. Expected: 15.2 and 17.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 21 points above where the report does. 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 — 58 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 · 63 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 51st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.59 a game
- Distance
- 1.34 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.9 mph
- 51st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
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 with OTT · 476 minutes at five-on-five
- Boris Katchoukoff the roster29%
- Dominik Kubalikoff the roster27%
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
- OTT took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 2.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 476 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parker Kelly | 47.6% | 45.6% | 46.2% |
| Jakob Chychrun | 50.6% | 44.4% | 47.3% |
| Erik Brannstrom | 53.1% | 44.1% | 51.4% |
47.6% together, 45.6% for him apart and 46.2% for Kelly apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
75 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.