Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Nikita Kucherov

Photo by Resolute, CC BY-SA 3.0

Nikita Kucherov

Tampa Bay Lightning Right Wing #86

130 points at 33, and 1,124 in his career.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2013-14TBL529918+3143031028.813:07
2014-15TBL82293665+383720219115.214:57
2015-16TBL77303666+93090420914.318:13
2016-17TBL74404585+1338170724616.319:26
2017-18TBL803961100+154280727914.019:49
2018-19TBL824187128+2462150824616.719:58
2019-20TBL68335285+263840621015.718:52
2021-22TBL47254469+12290115616.019:59
2022-23TBL823083113-23680427111.120:08
2023-24TBL8144100144+822130630614.421:40
2024-25TBL783784121+224580926514.021:11
2025-26TBL764486130+435081823119.120:20
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—8794017231124+200436104165271214.819:07

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

44 goals and 86 assists in 76 games — 130 points, plus-43, at 20:20 a night with 8 power-play goals and 50 penalty minutes.

His 879th career game and his 1,124th point. 723 career assists.

He turned 33 in June.

The Finesse Game

The best passer in the sport and it has not been close for several years. He holds the puck on the half-wall until the entire penalty kill has committed to the wrong man, and then it is in the net.

The shot chart is a curiosity: 376 unblocked attempts from a median of 34 feet, with only 24 per cent from inside 20 and 32 per cent from beyond 40, and 46 goals came out of it.

Almost nobody scores 44 goals from that far out. He is doing what Celebrini does in San Jose, 10 years further into the craft — the release beats goaltenders before they are set, so the distance stops mattering.

The Physical Game

6 foot even and 173 pounds, and he has never been physical in any sense. 50 penalty minutes, most of them frustration.

He avoids contact entirely and wins by being somewhere else. At 33 with 879 games played and no major injury history, that has turned out to be a strategy.

The Intangibles

57.8 per cent of the expected goals, 97th percentile, and 56.2 per cent of the shot attempts, 93rd, across 1,136 minutes, with the chances 65.9 to 48.1 in his favour.

10 points in his last 10, 4 of them goals. 2 Stanley Cups, a Hart, and 400 goals.

He is 33 and playing the best hockey of his life on a club that finished with the third-best possession numbers in the league. There is nothing to warn you about.

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.

  • perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in

    31.6% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    57.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 51.8% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.0, 94th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

  • workhorse· carries the load at even strength

    14:57 a game at five-on-five, 92nd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,136 minutes

Expected goals
57.8%
97th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
56.2%
94th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 86 for, 48 against. Expected: 65.9 and 48.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
95th
Numbers
97th

The two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 82 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, 2025-26 · 76 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
61st pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.82 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
3.21 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
92.1 mph
90th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

10

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 6 assists, 27 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1136 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, 2025-26

The club
TBL took 53.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.8% — 3.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,136 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brandon Hagel62.0%53.9%56.1%
J.J. Moser58.4%57.2%53.4%
Darren Raddysh62.2%54.3%52.4%

62.0% together, 53.9% for him apart and 56.1% for Hagel 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

376 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 46 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.