This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mats Zuccarello
Minnesota Wild Center
Seventy-nine points at 34, undrafted, the 13th-least ground covered of 365 forwards — and 39.7 per cent of the chances away from Kaprizov.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | NYR | 42 | 6 | 17 | 23 | +3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 74 | 8.1 | 14:10 |
| 2011-12 | NYR | 10 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 20.0 | 10:03 |
| 2012-13 | NYR | 15 | 3 | 5 | 8 | +10 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 11.1 | 16:25 |
| 2013-14 | NYR | 77 | 19 | 40 | 59 | +11 | 32 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 170 | 11.2 | 17:08 |
| 2014-15 | NYR | 78 | 15 | 34 | 49 | +17 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 154 | 9.7 | 17:16 |
| 2015-16 | NYR | 81 | 26 | 35 | 61 | +2 | 34 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 166 | 15.7 | 18:29 |
| 2016-17 | NYR | 80 | 15 | 44 | 59 | +15 | 26 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 189 | 7.9 | 18:50 |
| 2017-18 | NYR | 80 | 16 | 37 | 53 | -10 | 36 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 178 | 9.0 | 18:55 |
| 2018-19 | NYR/DAL | 48 | 12 | 28 | 40 | -8 | 24 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 104 | 11.5 | 19:51 |
| 2019-20 | MIN | 65 | 15 | 22 | 37 | -9 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 96 | 15.6 | 15:56 |
| 2020-21 | MIN | 42 | 11 | 24 | 35 | +9 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 74 | 14.9 | 16:41 |
| 2021-22 | MIN | 70 | 24 | 55 | 79 | +21 | 24 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 15.1 | 18:35 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 688 | 164 | 342 | 506 | +61 | 265 | 34 | 1 | 25 | 1401 | 11.7 | 17:37 |
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
24 goals and 55 assists in seventy games — 79 points, plus-21, at 18:35 a night. A career high at 34, beating the 61 of 2015-16.
Nobody drafted a 5-8 winger out of Norway and he has played 688 NHL games and scored 506 points. Fifty-five assists at 34 is a career high in a twelfth season, and 342 of his 506 career points are assists.
The Finesse Game
2.84 even-strength points per 60 is the 91st percentile and 35 per cent of his points came on the power play, also the 91st. He is productive in both places, which at his age and size is the unusual part.
7.33 shots per 60 is the 51st percentile at 15.1 per cent. 35 per cent from the slot is the 4th percentile — almost nobody in the league takes a smaller share of his shots from dangerous ice — against a 31-foot median at the 93rd. He shoots from outside and scores anyway, on a modest volume.
2.21 takeaways per 60 is the 85th percentile.
53.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 78th percentile. His ice went 62-42 against an expectation of 42.52-36.33, another twenty-goal overshoot.
And then the pair file. With Kirill Kaprizov across 1,617 attempts he took 56.3 per cent of the chances. Without him, over 270 attempts, 39.7. Kaprizov alone was at 51.8. The sample away from Kaprizov is small and the size of the gap is not.
The Physical Game
1.66 hits per 60 is the 15th percentile. He is 5-8 and 181 pounds and there is no physical dimension to report. Twenty-four penalty minutes.
He drew slightly more than he took and played four seconds a night short-handed.
The Intangibles
8.85 miles per 60 is the 13th-least of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, 2.2 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 11th percentile, and 22.0 mph is the 22nd. He is among the least mobile forwards the league measures by every reading it takes, at 34, and he scored seventy-nine points.
A 5-8 undrafted winger with 506 career points who cannot skate by the chips is the exact case this book exists to make: the measurements available do not reach the thing he does. What they do reach is the Kaprizov split, and that is the number to weigh against everything above.
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“Fifty-five assists at 34 is a career high in a twelfth season, and 342 of his 506 career points are assists.”
“Nobody drafted a 5-8 winger out of Norway and he has played 688 NHL games and scored 506 points.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,010 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.9%
- 81st pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.8%
- 77th 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: 62 for, 42 against. Expected: 42.5 and 36.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 28 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 43rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.67 a game
- Distance
- 2.74 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.3 mph
- 83rd 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 84.1
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 · 1010 minutes at five-on-five
- Ryan Hartman74%
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
- MIN took 53.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.9% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,010 minutes at five-on-five — 62nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirill Kaprizov | 56.3% | 39.7% | 51.8% |
| Ryan Hartman | 55.3% | 49.5% | 54.5% |
| Jonas Brodin | 56.0% | 53.0% | 56.2% |
56.3% together, 39.7% for him apart and 51.8% for Kaprizov 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
206 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.