Milan Lucic

One thousand one hundred and seventy-three games, 1,299 penalty minutes, and a 100 mph shot that produced seven goals.

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

2007-08	BOS	77	8	19	27	-2	89	1	0	4	88	9.1	12:07
2008-09	BOS	72	17	25	42	+17	136	2	0	3	97	17.5	14:57
2009-10	BOS	50	9	11	20	-7	44	0	0	2	72	12.5	14:21
2010-11	BOS	79	30	32	62	+28	121	5	0	7	173	17.3	16:35
2011-12	BOS	81	26	35	61	+7	135	7	0	1	149	17.4	17:02
2012-13	BOS	46	7	20	27	+8	75	0	0	0	79	8.9	16:55
2013-14	BOS	80	24	35	59	+30	91	3	0	5	153	15.7	17:23
2014-15	BOS	81	18	26	44	+13	81	2	0	4	141	12.8	16:21
2015-16	LAK	81	20	35	55	+26	79	2	0	5	124	16.1	17:14
2016-17	EDM	82	23	27	50	-3	50	12	0	3	175	13.1	17:10
2017-18	EDM	82	10	24	34	-12	80	3	0	1	147	6.8	15:58
2018-19	EDM	79	6	14	20	-9	91	2	0	0	74	8.1	13:14
2019-20	CGY	68	8	12	20	-6	54	5	0	1	83	9.6	13:20
2020-21	CGY	56	10	13	23	-8	46	2	0	0	74	13.5	13:38
2021-22	CGY	82	10	11	21	-9	84	2	0	0	95	10.5	12:15
2022-23	CGY	77	7	12	19	-13	43	0	0	0	73	9.6	11:18
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1173	233	351	584	+60	1299	48	0	36	1797	13.0	15:01

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

7 goals and 12 assists in 77 games for Calgary — 19 points at 11:18 a night, minus-13, on 73 shots and 43 penalty minutes.

49.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 846 minutes, the 44th percentile, which for a fourth-line winger at 34 is respectable. His ice went 31-45 against an expectation of 33.16-34.43 — eleven more goals conceded than the chances predicted, which is Calgary’s goaltending rather than his shifts.

The Finesse Game

73 attempts at a median of 22 feet with 47 per cent from inside 20, converting at 9.59 per cent.

The shot is measured at 100.2 mph, the 97th percentile in the league, and it produced seven goals. He has never been a finisher — 233 goals in 1,173 games — and the velocity has always been a curiosity rather than a weapon. What is left of the offensive game is a puck held on the wall until somebody arrives to take it.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 236, and 1,299 career penalty minutes — for a decade he was the most physically intimidating forward in the league and the reason opposing defencemen looked over their shoulder.

The skating has gone and it is not close: 21.9 mph is the 27th percentile, and 1.82 miles a game is the 8th. He is one of the least mobile forwards in the league now. He still hits, he still fights, and he cannot get to anybody who does not wait for him.

The Intangibles

Fiftieth overall in 2006, sixteen seasons, and he is back where he started — the winger on the 2011 Cup team, returning at 35 to a club that has just lost Bergeron and Krejci.

The signing is not really about hockey and Boston has not pretended otherwise. It is a fourth-line contract for a man the building loves, on a roster that has lost most of its identity in one summer. That is a defensible thing to spend a roster spot on once; it is not a plan, and 19 points is what it costs on the ice.

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.

punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He still hits, he still fights, and he cannot get to anybody who does not wait for him.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“for a decade he was the most physically intimidating forward in the league and the reason opposing defencemen looked over their shoulder”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“What is left of the offensive game is a puck held on the wall until somebody arrives to take it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 846 minutes

Expected goals: 49.1%; 45th pct
Shot attempts: 53.7%; 84th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 31 for, 45 against. Expected: 33.2 and 34.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

29th

Numbers

45th

The two rank him within 16 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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 with CGY · 846 minutes at five-on-five

Trevor Lewisnow LAK45%
Nazem Kadri31%
Jonathan Huberdeau23%

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: CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 6.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 846 minutes at five-on-five — 44th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Trevor Lewis	47.1%	50.4%	54.1%
Nikita Zadorov	50.1%	48.5%	55.6%
Rasmus Andersson	43.5%	51.8%	55.1%

47.1% together, 50.4% for him apart and 54.1% for Lewis 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

105 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.