This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Pavel Zacha
Boston Bruins Center
The sixth-overall pick New Jersey gave up on, arriving for Erik Haula with a 54.9 per cent chance share and a minus-21 beside it.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | NJD | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 16:51 |
| 2016-17 | NJD | 70 | 8 | 16 | 24 | -17 | 19 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 83 | 9.6 | 14:18 |
| 2017-18 | NJD | 69 | 8 | 17 | 25 | -3 | 30 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 112 | 7.1 | 14:22 |
| 2018-19 | NJD | 61 | 13 | 12 | 25 | -6 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 99 | 13.1 | 16:05 |
| 2019-20 | NJD | 65 | 8 | 24 | 32 | -12 | 14 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 97 | 8.3 | 16:16 |
| 2020-21 | NJD | 50 | 17 | 18 | 35 | -11 | 10 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 103 | 16.5 | 17:09 |
| 2021-22 | NJD | 70 | 15 | 21 | 36 | -21 | 22 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 148 | 10.1 | 16:51 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 386 | 69 | 110 | 179 | -66 | 110 | 23 | 5 | 10 | 645 | 10.7 | 15:46 |
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
With New Jersey. 15 goals and 21 assists in 70 games — 36 points at 16:51 a night, minus-21, with 4 power-play goals on 148 shots and 22 penalty minutes.
54.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 967 minutes, the 85th percentile. His ice went 40-45 against an expectation of 44.78-36.77 — five goals of scoring missing and eight more conceded than the chances predicted.
That is the whole of the minus-21 and none of it is the chance share. New Jersey’s goaltending finished 43.3 goals below the chances it faced, the worst figure in the league by eleven goals, on a club that took 51.4 per cent of the chances at five-on-five, 12th. A man at 55 per cent on that team finishes minus-21 without doing anything wrong.
39.1 per cent of his even-strength time was spent in the offensive zone, the 15th percentile. He took the hard end of the ice on a bad team.
The Finesse Game
148 attempts at a median of 28 feet — the 77th percentile for distance — with 42 per cent from inside the slot, the 18th. He shoots from the middle distance and converts at 10.1 per cent, and 69 goals in 386 games is what that produces.
1.68 even-strength points per 60 is the 42nd percentile. For a sixth-overall pick in his sixth season, that is the number the Devils looked at.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 211, and the frame is the reason a middling scorer keeps getting top-six minutes. 4.07 hits per 60 at the 53rd percentile is ordinary; the value is that he is difficult to take a puck from on a wall.
0.92 blocks per 60 is the 12th percentile among forwards. He is not part of a penalty kill and has not been.
Top speed 22.7 mph at the 64th percentile with 6.4 bursts above 20 mph per 60 at the 63rd. Ordinary, adequate, unremarkable.
The Intangibles
Sixth overall in 2015 by New Jersey, 386 games, 179 points, and traded to Boston in July for Erik Haula.
He is 25. A 6-4 centre with an 85th-percentile chance share and no production is a bet a good club can afford and a bad one cannot, which is roughly why New Jersey moved him and why Boston took him. Behind a 37-year-old centre playing a season at a time, the ice time is here for the bet to pay.
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.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- 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.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
5 of his 15 goals late or in overtime, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
“6-4 and 211, and the frame is the reason a middling scorer keeps getting top-six minutes”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 967 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.9%
- 86th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.8%
- 83rd 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: 40 for, 45 against. Expected: 44.8 and 36.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 38 points above where the report does. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2021-22 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 76th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.80 a game
- Distance
- 2.73 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.2 mph
- 91st 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 84.1
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
2021-22 with NJD · 967 minutes at five-on-five
- Tomas Tatar28%
- Jesper Bratt26%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- NJD took 51.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.9% — 3.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 967 minutes at five-on-five — 58th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nico Hischier | 56.8% | 52.9% | 52.4% |
| Ryan Graves | 53.9% | 55.4% | 51.6% |
| Damon Severson | 59.4% | 52.9% | 49.8% |
56.8% together, 52.9% for him apart and 52.4% for Hischier apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
211 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.