Nikita Zaitsev
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
The 3rd percentile in top speed, the 3rd in bursts, and an 83.5 mph shot at the 7th.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | TOR | 82 | 4 | 32 | 36 | -22 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 106 | 3.8 | 22:01 |
| 2017-18 | TOR | 60 | 5 | 8 | 13 | +8 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 54 | 9.3 | 22:13 |
| 2018-19 | TOR | 81 | 3 | 11 | 14 | +2 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 4.2 | 20:28 |
| 2019-20 | OTT | 58 | 1 | 11 | 12 | -8 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 64 | 1.6 | 22:09 |
| 2020-21 | OTT | 55 | 4 | 13 | 17 | -13 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 70 | 5.7 | 22:44 |
| 2021-22 | OTT | 62 | 2 | 9 | 11 | -7 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 65 | 3.1 | 18:59 |
| 2022-23 | OTT/CHI | 46 | 1 | 7 | 8 | -9 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 5.0 | 16:28 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 444 | 20 | 91 | 111 | -49 | 183 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 450 | 4.4 | 20:52 |
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
1 goal and 7 assists in 46 games between Ottawa and Chicago — 8 points at 16:28 a night, minus-9, with 20 penalty minutes.
41.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 652 minutes, the 6th percentile. His ice went 23-33 against an expectation of 21.47-30.55.
37.6 per cent of his even-strength shifts started in the offensive zone, the 3rd percentile.
The Finesse Game
20 attempts all season at a median of 52 feet, 74 per cent from beyond forty. One goal, from out there, on twelve shots.
His shot is 83.5 mph, the 7th percentile, and twenty attempts across 46 games is barely a shot every other night. 20 goals and 111 points in 444 career games at 4.44 per cent.
What he does with the puck is move it and hope. There is no part of the offensive game to write about.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 192, and the tracking is close to the floor of the league in every category that measures moving: 21.0 mph at the 3rd percentile, 0.1 bursts a game at the 3rd, 2.35 miles at the 34th.
He is 31 and none of this is new. He has never been fast and the game has got faster around him, which is the plainest version of how a defenceman leaves the league.
The Intangibles
He arrived without a pick attached — undrafted out of Russia, signed by Toronto out of the KHL, and 444 NHL games since.
That is a real achievement and it is also over. He was a salary-cap attachment in the trade that brought him to Chicago, and a club with the first overall pick has no use for a 31-year-old third pair.
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.
“He arrived without a pick attached”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 652 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.3%
- 6th pct
- Shot attempts
- 41.5%
- 4th 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: 23 for, 33 against. Expected: 21.5 and 30.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 6 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 141 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 46 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 OTT · 398 minutes at five-on-five
- Thomas Chabot64%
- Erik Brannstrom17%
- Nick Holdenoff the roster12%
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
- CHI took 42.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.3% — 1.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 652 minutes at five-on-five — 26th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Chabot | 47.3% | 36.6% | 52.5% |
| Brady Tkachuk | 54.7% | 37.8% | 55.5% |
| Claude Giroux | 53.1% | 38.4% | 54.9% |
47.3% together, 36.6% for him apart and 52.5% for Chabot apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Chabot and did not follow him.
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
35 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 59 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.