This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Pavel Zacha
Boston Bruins Center
Fifty-seven points, and twenty goals more than the chances on his ice predicted.
| 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 | BOS | 82 | 21 | 36 | 57 | +26 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 131 | 16.0 | 16:03 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 468 | 90 | 146 | 236 | -40 | 126 | 26 | 5 | 13 | 776 | 11.6 | 15:49 |
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
21 goals and 36 assists in 82 games — 57 points at 16:03 a night, plus-26, with 3 power-play goals on 131 shots, converting at 16.03 per cent, and 16 penalty minutes.
A career high by nineteen points, in a first season in Boston after six that had begun to look like a disappointment in New Jersey.
51.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,066 minutes, the 62nd percentile — and his ice went 65-39 against an expectation of 44.86-42.45. Twenty goals more than the chances predicted. That is the largest overperformance on the roster and it is the single number to hold against everything else here.
The Finesse Game
131 attempts at a median of 25 feet, 34 per cent from inside 20 and only 13 per cent from beyond 40, off a shot measured at 95.9 mph — the 83rd percentile, which is genuinely hard.
Sixteen per cent shooting on a hard shot from mid-range is a plausible skill rather than an obvious fluke, and that is the argument for him. Against it: 90 goals in 468 career games says the rate has never been anywhere near this before.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 211 and he does not play to the size — 126 penalty minutes in 468 games, and he is more a puck-protection forward than a punishing one.
The skating is decent at 22.4 mph, the 58th percentile, with 1.7 bursts a game at the 79th. He is quick enough to play with Pastrnak, which is the job he has been given.
The Intangibles
Sixth overall in 2015 to New Jersey, and six seasons there that never produced more than 36 points before Boston traded Erik Haula for him.
He is 26 and, with Bergeron and Krejci retired, the club’s second centre almost by default. The uncomfortable arithmetic is that Boston is asking a man who has been a top-six centre for one season — a season in which his ice outscored its chances by twenty goals — to replace two Hall-of-Fame-adjacent ones.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“he is more a puck-protection forward than a punishing one”
“6-4 and 211 and he does not play to the size — 126 penalty minutes in 468 games”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,066 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.4%
- 62nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 54th 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: 65 for, 39 against. Expected: 44.9 and 42.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 99 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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1066 minutes at five-on-five
- David Krejcioff the roster54%
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
- BOS took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.4% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,066 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Pastrnak | 50.4% | 52.9% | 58.3% |
| David Krejci | 47.8% | 55.6% | 48.8% |
| Hampus Lindholm | 55.0% | 49.5% | 56.4% |
50.4% together, 52.9% for him apart and 58.3% for Pastrnak apart. Pastrnak was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for 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
177 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.