This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Michael Pezzetta
Montreal Canadiens Left Wing
The least ground covered of all 568 skaters who played forty games — 1.29 miles a night — in 7:50 of ice time.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | MTL | 51 | 5 | 6 | 11 | -7 | 81 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 10.2 | 7:50 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 51 | 5 | 6 | 11 | -7 | 81 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 10.2 | 7:50 |
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
5 goals and 6 assists in fifty-one games at 7:50 a night, minus-7, eighty-one penalty minutes. One hundred and sixtieth overall in 2016, and this was all of his NHL career, at 24. 6-1 and 222 pounds.
7:50 a night is the smallest role on the roster by a distance.
The Finesse Game
Three hundred and ninety-one five-on-five minutes is below the qualifying lines. The raw record is better than expected: his ice took 49.9 per cent of the five-on-five expected goals, which on a club that finished 27th in the league is comfortably the best share of any Montreal forward.
His ice went 16-23 against an expectation of 16.09-16.18 — the chances came out even and the goals did not, which across 391 minutes is mostly noise.
Forty-nine shots, five goals, from a 22-foot median with 45 per cent inside twenty feet. 83.3 mph is the 5th percentile of the 568 — one of the softest shots the league records.
The Physical Game
Eighty-one penalty minutes in fifty-one games at 7:50 a night is a very high rate for the ice time, and it is the reason he was in the lineup.
At 6-1 and 222 on a club that finished 25th on the penalty kill, that ledger is expensive, and the counting rates across 391 minutes are not stable enough to say how expensive.
The Intangibles
1.29 miles a game is the least ground covered of all 568 skaters who played forty games in the league. That is almost entirely a statement about playing under eight minutes rather than about effort — the per-game figure scales with ice time, and this is the floor of the distribution because his role is the floor of the distribution.
22.4 mph is the 59th percentile, so the skating itself is ordinary.
He is 24 in his first NHL season. The only thing the record establishes is that a fourth-line role was available and he filled it physically, and the 49.9 per cent share on a last-place club is the one number that suggests there might be more.
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.
- 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.
“Eighty-one penalty minutes in fifty-one games at 7:50 a night is a very high rate for the ice time, and it is the reason he was in the lineup.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 391 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.9%
- 55th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.2%
- 39th 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: 16 for, 23 against. Expected: 16.1 and 16.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 42 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 — 52 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 · 51 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 65th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.35 a game
- Distance
- 1.29 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 83.3 mph
- 31st 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 · 391 minutes at five-on-five
- Cedric Paquetteoff the roster18%
- Jake Evans16%
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
- MTL took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 3.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 391 minutes at five-on-five — 12th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Poehling | 43.4% | 54.5% | 48.2% |
| Alexander Romanov | 60.5% | 44.7% | 45.0% |
| David Savard | 49.5% | 50.0% | 44.6% |
43.4% together, 54.5% for him apart and 48.2% for Poehling apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
65 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.