This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Paul Cotter
Vegas Golden Knights Left Wing
Thirteen goals and five assists, at a 17 per cent career shooting rate on eighty-seven shots.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | VGK | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 18.2 | 8:49 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 55 | 13 | 5 | 18 | -5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 17.1 | 12:50 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 62 | 15 | 5 | 20 | -4 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 87 | 17.2 | 12:23 |
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
13 goals and 5 assists in 55 games — 18 points — at 12:50 a night, in his first real NHL season. Minus-5, 76 shots at 17.1 per cent, 15 penalty minutes.
Thirteen goals and five assists is one of the most lopsided lines in this book, and it says something true about him: he shoots, and he does not much pass.
44.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 12th percentile, across 683 minutes, with his ice at 26-31 against an expectation of 25.30-31.88.
He started 48.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 38th percentile, so the deployment explains only part of it. This is the worst chance share of any forward on this roster.
The Finesse Game
76 shots at a median of 20 feet, with 53 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 14 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside twenty feet: 43 shots on goal and 10 goals — 23.26 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 23 shots and four goals, 17.39 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 10 shots and none.
Well above the rate from both bands, on sixty-six shots on goal, which is not enough to conclude anything. A career 17.2 per cent on 87 shots is a rookie’s number and it will come down.
95 tracked attempts, 50 of them wrist shots and 15 backhands, with no slap shots at all. 88.1 mph at the 31st percentile.
15 goals in 62 career games. The volume is what has to grow: seventy-six shots in fifty-five games is not a scorer’s rate and thirteen goals came out of it anyway.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 213 pounds, with 15 penalty minutes in 55 games and 21 in 62 career games.
2.1 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 87th percentile, at a top speed of 22.5 mph, the 59th, on 2.02 miles a game at the 17th — which is thirteen minutes of ice time.
Genuinely quick, and the burst count is the reason he was given a job at all.
He forechecks hard and hits everything, which at 213 pounds is what a fourth line on this club is for.
He is not yet strong enough on the puck to hold it once he wins it, and the 12th-percentile chance share is partly that.
The Intangibles
A hundred and fifteenth overall in 2018, the fourth round, two seasons, 62 games, 20 points, all of them here, and a Stanley Cup at twenty-three.
15 goals and five assists, and a minus-4.
He is twenty-three, a fourth-round pick who has already scored thirteen goals in a season and has never had a full one.
The file is two things at once. A twenty-three-year-old with a 17 per cent shooting rate and a 12th-percentile chance share is a player whose good number is the fragile one and whose bad number is the durable one. What survives is the burst count and the willingness.
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.
“He forechecks hard and hits everything, which at 213 pounds is what a fourth line on this club is for.”
“He is not yet strong enough on the puck to hold it once he wins it, and the 12th-percentile chance share is partly that.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 683 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44.2%
- 16th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.5%
- 7th 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: 26 for, 31 against. Expected: 25.3 and 31.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 42 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2022-23 · 55 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 65th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.07 a game
- Distance
- 2.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.1 mph
- 55th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 · 683 minutes at five-on-five
- Phil Kesseloff the roster35%
- Jack Eichel25%
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
- VGK took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.2% — 6.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 683 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phil Kessel | 34.1% | 51.3% | 54.6% |
| Brayden McNabb | 42.3% | 45.2% | 54.4% |
| Nicolas Hague | 41.6% | 45.7% | 50.9% |
34.1% together, 51.3% for him apart and 54.6% for Kessel 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
97 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.