This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nikita Nesterenko
Anaheim Ducks Center
20 NHL games, 4 goals, and a first look at a 24-year-old the organisation has been patient with.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | ANA | 9 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3 | 13:17 |
| 2023-24 | ANA | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 14.3 | 11:31 |
| 2024-25 | ANA | 20 | 4 | 2 | 6 | -4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 20.0 | 10:19 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 32 | 6 | 2 | 8 | -7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 12.0 | 11:16 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
4 goals and 2 assists in 20 games for 6 points, minus-4, on 10:19 a night.
4 goals on 20 shots is 20 per cent, in twenty games, which means nothing at all. The useful observation is that he was not obviously out of place, which for a bottom-six forward on a first look is the whole test.
The Finesse Game
Adequate at the level and not more. The shot is ordinary, the hands work at moderate speed, and 6 points in 20 games is neither encouraging nor damning.
What there is to like is that he plays a simple game — puck deep, retrieve, get it to the middle — without the young player’s habit of trying to make one more play than the shift allows.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 203, and he is willing on the forecheck without being punishing. He does not lose battles by being outmuscled, which at this weight is the minimum requirement.
2 penalty minutes in 20 games. Too small a sample to read.
The Intangibles
A sixth-round pick who went the college route, came over in a trade, and has spent three seasons in the American League waiting.
The realistic ceiling is a fourth-line winger. On this roster that job is genuinely available, which is more than most players in his position get.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“he is willing on the forecheck”
“he is willing on the forecheck without being punishing”
“He does not lose battles by being outmuscled, which at this weight is the minimum requirement.”
The numbers underneath
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 20 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 71st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.90 a game
- Distance
- 1.64 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 80.7 mph
- 22nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 173 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.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
31 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 55% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.