This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Martin Necas

A 24.0 mph top speed at the 99th percentile — the fifth-fastest forward in this book — and only 31 per cent of his shots from the slot.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2017-18	CAR	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	6:54
2018-19	CAR	7	1	1	2	0	2	0	0	0	6	16.7	10:01
2019-20	CAR	64	16	20	36	-6	20	5	0	3	88	18.2	14:10
2020-21	CAR	53	14	27	41	+25	10	4	2	3	114	12.3	17:17
2021-22	CAR	78	14	26	40	+5	32	2	1	6	159	8.8	16:11
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	203	45	74	119	+24	64	11	3	12	367	12.3	15:35

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

14 goals and 26 assists in 78 games — 40 points at 16:11 a night, plus-5, with 2 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded and 6 game-winners on 159 shots and 32 penalty minutes.

50.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,019 minutes, the 58th percentile — the lowest of any Carolina forward who played a full season. His ice went 47-41 against an expectation of 44.81-44.17.

Forty points is a fall from 41 in 53 games the season before, and the reason is where the shots came from.

The Finesse Game

31 per cent of his attempts came from inside the slot — the 2nd percentile among the league’s forwards — at a median of 34 feet, the 98th. He shoots from further out than almost any forward in hockey and converted at 8.8 per cent, the 27th percentile.

3.56 giveaways per 60 is among the highest figures for a forward in the league. He carries at speed into places he cannot get out of, and on a club as structured as this one that is the specific fault the coaching staff keeps naming.

2.03 even-strength points per 60 is the 65th percentile. There is a real playmaker in here and the finishing has never arrived: 45 goals in 203 career games.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 195, and 2.61 hits per 60 at the 31st percentile with 0.90 blocks at the 11th. He is a big man who plays a small man’s game.

The skating is exceptional and the measurement is emphatic: 24.0 mph top speed is the 99th percentile among the league’s forwards — the fifth-highest reading of any forward in this book — and 3.4 bursts above 20 mph a game is the 97th percentile, and he beats a defenceman wide from a standing start.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2017, out of Brno, and 203 games for 119 points by twenty-three.

He is 23, a restricted free agent re-signed in the summer after a season that went backwards. Carolina has the fastest forward in its building and one of the most perimeter shot charts in the league attached to him, and until those two facts stop contradicting each other he is a third-line winger on a club that needs a second-line centre.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
37.7% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“3.4 bursts above 20 mph a game is the 97th percentile, and he beats a defenceman wide from a standing start”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,019 minutes

Expected goals: 50.4%; 59th pct
Shot attempts: 55%; 88th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 47 for, 41 against. Expected: 44.8 and 44.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

48th

Numbers

59th

The two rank him within 11 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2021-22 · 78 games

Top speed: 24.0 mph; 99th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.40 a game
Distance: 2.85 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.9 mph; 90th pct

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

2021-22 · 1019 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, 2021-22

The club: CAR took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.4% — 4.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,019 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Vincent Trocheck	50.3%	50.4%	57.9%
Jaccob Slavin	50.1%	50.5%	59.6%
Brady Skjei	49.1%	50.9%	54.4%

50.3% together, 50.4% for him apart and 57.9% for Trocheck apart. Trocheck was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

223 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 23% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 37% from beyond forty.