Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

47

Mark Kastelic

Boston Bruins Center

6-4 and 234 pounds, 106 penalty minutes in 61 games, and a 45.1 per cent chance share.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22OTT16224-1140011118.29:11
2022-23OTT657411-6102002739.68:54
2023-24OTT635510-563000608.37:43
2024-25BOS615914-3106000677.510:44
2025-26 so far
Career205192039-152850032119.09:06

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

5 goals and 9 assists in 61 games for 14 points, minus-3, on 10:44 a night.

45.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 15th percentile. His on-ice goals were 37-38 against an expected 20-25, which is a fourth line being rescued by its goaltending to the tune of 13 goals.

The Finesse Game

Limited, and honestly so. 67 shots and 5 goals, 40 per cent of them from inside 20 feet because that is the only place he is dangerous.

There is no playmaking and no puck game at speed. He is on a roster to be big and to win a draw, and 14 points is a fair description of the rest.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 234, and among the heaviest forwards in the league. He hits, he fights, and he wins pucks below the goal line by simply arriving.

106 penalty minutes in 61 games is the second-highest rate on the club. Some of that is the role; a considerable amount of it is a cost the penalty kill then has to absorb.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick who made himself into an NHL fourth-liner through size and work, and there is no question about the willingness.

The league is carrying fewer of these players every year. On a club that finished 27th in chance creation, 631 minutes of a forward who cannot make a play is a use of ice time that is getting harder to justify.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 631 minutes

Expected goals
45.1%
15th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.8%
7th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 38 against. Expected: 20.3 and 24.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
28th
Numbers
15th

The two rank him within 13 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 337 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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 · 631 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
BOS took 48.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.1% — 3.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 631 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
John Beecher50.9%36.9%43.3%
Cole Koepke47.3%43.3%49.5%
Nikita Zadorov46.5%44.0%49.8%

50.9% together, 36.9% for him apart and 43.3% for Beecher apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

90 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.