Pavel Buchnevich

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

73 games, 30 goals and 46 assists at 18:18 a night, plus-29, thirty-four penalty minutes, 199 shots. Eight of the thirty came on the power play and two short-handed. Seventy-fifth overall in 2013 by the Rangers — the third round — six seasons, 374 games, 271 points.

The Finesse Game

54.2 per cent of the expected goals is the 79th percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, and it is the best figure on this roster by nearly two full points.

The with-and-without file is the report. Nine team-mates have a recorded line beside him and all nine took a better share of the expected goals with him than in the minutes they played apart from him. Vladimir Tarasenko 54.4 with against 42.8 apart. Robert Thomas 59.4 against 45.2. Colton Parayko 56.4 against 43.8. Robert Bortuzzo 59.9 against 46.5. Niko Mikkola 54.4 against 45.1. Ivan Barbashev 49.2 against 41.4. Justin Faulk 52.3 against 48.4. Torey Krug 49.9 against 47.7. Scott Perunovich 53.0 against 46.0.

Six of the nine gaps are larger than eight points and the smallest is two. On a club that finished 26th in the league in attempt share, one forward moved the chance ledger for everybody he stood beside.

8.94 shots per 60 is the 76th percentile at 15.1 per cent, from a 26-foot median with forty-five per cent from the slot. 3.01 even-strength points per 60 is the 94th percentile.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 196 pounds, and thirty-four penalty minutes in seventy-three games.

0.67 blocks per 60 is the 4th percentile among forwards and 2.56 hits the 30th. He does none of it and the club rated 9th on the penalty kill anyway, where he took 1:35 a night at the 76th percentile.

The Intangibles

22.7 mph is the 70th percentile and 9.67 miles per 60 the 52nd, against 3.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 24th. Ordinary top speed, ordinary ground covered, and he almost never opens up.

Nothing here measures his hands or where he chooses to be, and the with-and-without numbers are the closest the record comes to it.

He is 27, in his second season out of New York, and the seventy-six points are a career high by twenty-eight. A club that scored 311 goals off the 26th-best possession in hockey had exactly one forward whose ice made everyone around him better, and the file names him.