This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →

Max Pacioretty

Nineteen goals in 39 games at thirty-three, traded to Carolina for nothing in July, and an Achilles tendon torn in August.

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

2008-09	MTL	34	3	8	11	-3	27	1	0	0	57	5.3	12:37
2009-10	MTL	52	3	11	14	-5	20	0	0	0	74	4.0	12:43
2010-11	MTL	37	14	10	24	-1	39	7	0	2	112	12.5	15:54
2011-12	MTL	79	33	32	65	+2	56	4	0	5	286	11.5	18:16
2012-13	MTL	44	15	24	39	+8	28	4	0	0	163	9.2	16:31
2013-14	MTL	73	39	21	60	+8	35	10	1	11	270	14.4	18:29
2014-15	MTL	80	37	30	67	+38	32	7	3	10	302	12.3	19:24
2015-16	MTL	82	30	34	64	-10	34	8	1	6	303	9.9	18:32
2016-17	MTL	81	35	32	67	+15	38	8	1	7	268	13.1	19:11
2017-18	MTL	64	17	20	37	-16	30	6	1	4	212	8.0	19:01
2018-19	VGK	66	22	18	40	-13	36	4	0	5	191	11.5	17:00
2019-20	VGK	71	32	34	66	+18	44	8	0	5	307	10.4	17:55
2020-21	VGK	48	24	27	51	+20	14	6	0	6	174	13.8	17:56
2021-22	VGK	39	19	18	37	+8	33	4	0	4	148	12.8	17:23
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	850	323	319	642	+69	466	77	7	65	2867	11.3	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

With Vegas. 19 goals and 18 assists in 39 games — 37 points at 17:23 a night, plus-8, with 4 power-play goals and 4 game-winners on 148 shots and 33 penalty minutes.

Nineteen goals in 39 games is a 40-goal pace at thirty-three, and injuries have now cost him large parts of three consecutive seasons.

53.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 536 minutes, the 80th percentile. His ice went 29-19 against an expectation of 26.32-22.71 — three goals of scoring above what the chances predicted and four fewer conceded than they did.

The Finesse Game

148 attempts in 39 games is a genuinely high rate, at 12.8 per cent conversion. 25 per cent of his attempts came from inside the slot at a median of 30 feet, which is further out than the goal totals suggest — he scores off the rush and from the top of the circle rather than from the crease.

323 goals in 850 career games and six 30-goal seasons. The shot is the whole career and it has not declined.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 217, and 33 penalty minutes in 39 games. He is not a physical player in the ordinary sense; he is strong enough not to be moved off a puck, which at his role is what matters.

Top speed 22.6 mph at the 69th percentile with 1.6 bursts above 20 mph a game at the 76th. The feet are fine and the injuries are not.

The Intangibles

Twenty-second overall in 2007 by Montreal, 850 games, 642 points, a captaincy in Montreal and four seasons in Vegas.

Carolina acquired him in July, along with Dylan Coghlan, for future considerations — Vegas needed the cap space and gave away a 40-goal pace for nothing.

And then he tore an Achilles tendon in August. He is 33, he will miss most of this season, and a club that got a top-line winger for free is now going to find out what it actually paid.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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
30.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
net-frontpresent and ordinary· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“25 per cent of his attempts came from inside the slot at a median of 30 feet, which is further out than the goal totals suggest”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 536 minutes

Expected goals: 53.7%; 80th pct
Shot attempts: 54.8%; 87th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 19 against. Expected: 26.3 and 22.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

70th

Numbers

80th

The two rank him within 10 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 — 65 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 · 39 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 73rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.64 a game
Distance: 2.63 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.1 mph; 68th 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 with VGK · 536 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: VGK took 52.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.7% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: 536 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Chandler Stephenson	50.6%	61.5%	50.8%
Mark Stone	55.3%	51.1%	47.2%
Shea Theodore	54.7%	52.9%	52.3%

50.6% together, 61.5% for him apart and 50.8% for Stephenson apart. He was better away from Stephenson, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Stephenson.

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

200 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.