Nikita Kucherov

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

47 games, 25 goals and 44 assists at 19:59 a night, plus-1, twenty-two penalty minutes, 156 shots. Nine of the twenty-five came on the power play. Fifty-eighth overall in 2011 by Tampa Bay — the second round — eight seasons, 562 games, 616 points.

The Finesse Game

Forty-four of his sixty-nine points are assists, and he has made 370 across eight seasons while shooting from further out than all but fourteen forwards in the league.

Sixty-nine points in forty-seven games is 1.47 a game. His career rate is 1.10 and he has now been at or above 1.25 in four separate seasons.

3.10 even-strength points per 60 is the 95th percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, and 3:53 on the power play is the 99th — the largest power-play workload of any forward on the club. Forty-three per cent of his points came there, the 97th percentile.

9.97 shots per 60 is the 88th percentile at 16.0 per cent, from a 30-foot median at the 90th percentile with thirty-four per cent of his attempts from the slot — the 15th-lowest share of all 393 forwards.

He shoots often and rarely from the paint, and converts at sixteen per cent anyway.

51.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 63rd percentile, out of 59.1 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 70th-highest of 652 skaters — the softest chair on the club.

2.36 giveaways per 60 is the 90th percentile, against 1.53 takeaways at the 43rd.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 173 pounds, and twenty-two penalty minutes in forty-seven games.

2.04 hits per 60 is the 21st percentile and 0.45 blocks per 60 is the 1st — the fewest of any forward on this roster. There is next to nothing physical in the record.

The Intangibles

23.1 mph is the 85th percentile among forwards and 9.33 miles per 60 the 24th, against 1.9 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 8th percentile — one of the lowest sprint counts in the league.

Fast when he opens up and he almost never does. That pattern — a high top speed and a low sprint count — belongs to a player who controls the pace rather than beating it, and the record can describe it without explaining it.

He is 29, with 616 points in 562 games. Forty-seven games is the concern, and it is the fewest he has played in a full season since his first. The production, when he plays, is elite at both strengths and the record says so without qualification — 1.47 points a game, a 95th-percentile even-strength rate and the biggest power-play role on a club that finished 3rd in the league on it.