This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Martin Necas
Carolina Hurricanes Center
Seventy-one points, thirty more than he had ever managed, and the only man on the club who scores from range.
| 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 | CAR | 82 | 28 | 43 | 71 | +5 | 32 | 9 | 0 | 5 | 240 | 11.7 | 18:25 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 285 | 73 | 117 | 190 | +29 | 96 | 20 | 3 | 17 | 607 | 12.0 | 16:24 |
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
28 goals and 43 assists in 82 games — 71 points at 18:25 a night, plus-5, with 9 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 240 shots at 11.67 per cent.
His previous best was 41 points. He had 36, 41 and 40 in the three seasons before it, and then 71.
55.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,152 minutes, the 90th percentile. His ice went 60-52 against an expectation of 54.58-43.44 — he beat the forecast for and missed it against, which is the opposite of what most of this roster did.
The Finesse Game
240 attempts at a median of 32 feet, 24 per cent from inside twenty and 28 per cent from beyond forty, off a 96.8 mph shot at the 87th percentile.
This chapter has spent a lot of words on how little the long shot returns — 3.19 per cent for a defenceman across the league, 4.03 for a forward. Necas put 56 shots on goal from beyond forty feet and scored six, at 10.71 per cent, and added 35 on 238 from inside it. He is the one man on this roster the distance argument does not apply to, and 56 shots is a small enough sample that the right response is to watch it rather than to conclude anything.
The tracking finds 3.5 bursts over 20 mph a game, the 98th percentile in the league, and that is the measurable thing about him. It is acceleration, not agility: the feed times how often he gets up to speed, not what he does when he arrives, and this book is careful about the difference because the two get written about as though they were one.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 195, 32 penalty minutes, and a game with almost no contact in it. He goes around people, which at 3.5 bursts a game is a reasonable policy.
3.09 miles a game at the 85th percentile and 22.7 mph at the 70th. The legs are the asset and the club uses them on the rush.
The Intangibles
A first-round pick at 12th overall in 2017 who took five seasons to arrive and then arrived at 24.
What the numbers cannot settle is whether 71 points is the player or the season. The underlying rates moved with the production, which is the encouraging version, and one year is one year. He has been asked to play centre and wing, and the club has never quite settled it; on a roster with Aho and Staal down the middle, the position may end up being decided for him.
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
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.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
9 of his 28 goals late or in overtime, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:03 a game at five-on-five, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,152 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.7%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 58.3%
- 96th 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: 60 for, 52 against. Expected: 54.6 and 43.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 141 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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
2022-23 · 1152 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, 2022-23
- The club
- CAR took 58.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.7% — 3.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,152 minutes at five-on-five — 79th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrei Svechnikov | 60.6% | 51.1% | 60.2% |
| Jesperi Kotkaniemi | 54.7% | 56.3% | 60.2% |
| Brent Burns | 55.2% | 56.0% | 62.0% |
60.6% together, 51.1% for him apart and 60.2% for Svechnikov apart. He was worse away from Svechnikov, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Svechnikov did.
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
348 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.