This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nikita Zadorov
Boston Bruins Defense
Six foot seven, 255 pounds, seven hundred and one penalty minutes — and the club had nobody like him.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | BUF | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 25.0 | 17:10 |
| 2014-15 | BUF | 60 | 3 | 12 | 15 | -10 | 51 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 52 | 5.8 | 17:42 |
| 2015-16 | COL | 22 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -5 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 0.0 | 16:56 |
| 2016-17 | COL | 56 | 0 | 10 | 10 | -20 | 73 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 61 | 0.0 | 19:02 |
| 2017-18 | COL | 77 | 7 | 13 | 20 | +4 | 103 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 94 | 7.4 | 19:28 |
| 2018-19 | COL | 70 | 7 | 7 | 14 | +19 | 75 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 | 7.0 | 17:12 |
| 2019-20 | COL | 64 | 4 | 9 | 13 | +6 | 65 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 65 | 6.2 | 17:46 |
| 2020-21 | CHI | 55 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +1 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 1.9 | 19:12 |
| 2021-22 | CGY | 74 | 4 | 18 | 22 | +11 | 77 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 106 | 3.8 | 16:55 |
| 2022-23 | CGY | 82 | 14 | 7 | 21 | +10 | 80 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 130 | 10.8 | 18:41 |
| 2023-24 | CGY/VAN | 75 | 6 | 14 | 20 | 0 | 125 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 90 | 6.7 | 17:26 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 642 | 47 | 99 | 146 | +12 | 701 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 772 | 6.1 | 18:05 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
6 goals and 14 assists in 75 games for Calgary and Vancouver — 20 points at 17:26 a night, even, on 90 shots with 125 penalty minutes.
49.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,176 minutes, the 52nd percentile. His ice went 45-43 against an expectation of 44.04-44.31 — fourteen goals scored above expectation and seven conceded above it, on a third pair that spent the year in the offensive end more than the chances say it should have.
The Finesse Game
90 attempts at a median of 54 feet, with 76 per cent from beyond 40 and 3 per cent from inside 20, converting at 6.67 per cent. Six goals from the point is a good return and the shot is genuinely heavy.
14 assists. He does not carry the puck out under pressure and the first pass is a short one — 146 points in 642 games is the whole of the offensive record and none of it is why he is employed.
The Physical Game
6-7 and 255 with 701 penalty minutes in 642 games — the heaviest defenceman in this edition.
He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes every check. A forward who takes the puck into the corner against him is making a decision about the rest of the night.
He takes liberties and he answers for them. 125 penalty minutes on a club that finished third in shorthanded time is the arithmetic the coaching staff has to accept, and it accepted it deliberately.
The Intangibles
Sixteenth overall in 2013 by Buffalo, and 642 games across five clubs at 29, none of them for more than three seasons.
He was signed here because the club had nobody like him — a top-six that is large and skilled and a blue line that defended with position, in a division that plays in the corners. That is a coherent piece of roster-building and it is also 125 penalty minutes.
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
- 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.
“**6-7 and 255 with 701 penalty minutes in 642 games — the heaviest defenceman in this edition.**”
“**He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes every check.**”
“**He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes every check.**”
“A forward who takes the puck into the corner against him is making a decision about the rest of the night.”
“**He takes liberties and he answers for them.** 125 penalty minutes on a club that finished third in shorthanded time is the arithmetic the coaching staff has to accept, and it accepted it deliberately.”
“**He does not carry the puck out under pressure and the first pass is a short one** — 146 points in 642 games is the whole of the offensive record and none of it is why he is employed.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,176 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.9%
- 52nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51%
- 63rd 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: 45 for, 43 against. Expected: 44.0 and 44.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 17 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2023-24 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 95th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.83 a game
- Distance
- 2.52 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.2 mph
- 82nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 with VAN · 834 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Myers28%
- Noah Juulsen28%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- VAN took 52.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 2.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,176 minutes at five-on-five — 81st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Myers | 45.6% | 51.0% | 54.2% |
| Ilya Mikheyev | 49.4% | 50.0% | 55.7% |
| Noah Juulsen | 48.3% | 50.2% | 51.1% |
45.6% together, 51.0% for him apart and 54.2% for Myers 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
147 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 57 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.