This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Pavel Zacha
Boston Bruins Center
Fifty-nine points and six game-winners, from a 6-4 centre who takes half his shots from inside twenty feet.
| 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 | BOS | 78 | 21 | 38 | 59 | +12 | 18 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 148 | 14.2 | 18:06 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 546 | 111 | 184 | 295 | -28 | 144 | 32 | 5 | 19 | 924 | 12.0 | 16:08 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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 38 assists in 78 games — 59 points at 18:06 a night, plus-12, with 6 power-play goals and 6 game-winners on 148 shots, converting at 14.19 per cent, and only 18 penalty minutes. A career high in points.
49.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,014 minutes, the 52nd percentile. His ice went 56-33 against an expectation of 44.33-44.55 — fourteen fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted, the largest defensive surplus of any forward on the roster.
The Finesse Game
148 attempts at a median of 20 feet, with 50 per cent from inside 20 and 11 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 14.19 per cent. He shoots from the middle of the ice and almost never from the boards.
38 assists is the larger half. He carries the puck through the neutral zone under control at 6-4 and gains the offensive line with it, and the pass out of the corner arrives when a teammate becomes open rather than before.
295 points in 546 games, and the last two seasons are both career highs.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 211 and he does not play as heavy as that. He protects the puck with the frame and does not use it to punish anybody.
18 penalty minutes in 78 games and 144 in 546 for his career is one of the cleanest rates on the roster. He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties, and on a club spending 5:30 a game shorthanded that is worth naming.
The Intangibles
Sixth overall in 2015 by New Jersey, written off there across six seasons, and traded here for Erik Haula in 2022.
He is 27 and has posted the two best seasons of his career since arriving. A sixth-overall pick who becomes a genuine top-six forward at 26 on his second club is a more common story than it sounds, and it still requires somebody to have been right about him.
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
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“**38 assists is the larger half.** He carries the puck through the neutral zone under control at 6-4 and gains the offensive line with it, and the pass out of the corner arrives when a teammate becomes open rather than before.”
“He carries the puck through the neutral zone under control at 6-4 and gains the offensive line with it, and the pass out of the corner arrives when a teammate becomes open rather than before.”
“6-4 and 211 and he does not play as heavy as that. He protects the puck with the frame and does not use it to punish anybody.”
“He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties, and on a club spending 5:30 a game shorthanded that is worth naming.”
“He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties, and on a club spending 5:30 a game shorthanded that is worth naming.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,014 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.9%
- 52nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 48%
- 35th 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: 56 for, 33 against. Expected: 44.3 and 44.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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, 2023-24 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 75th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.14 a game
- Distance
- 2.88 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.2 mph
- 91st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 1014 minutes at five-on-five
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, 2023-24
- The club
- BOS took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,014 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Pastrnak | 52.1% | 40.5% | 52.4% |
| Charlie McAvoy | 52.4% | 47.6% | 50.0% |
| Hampus Lindholm | 48.7% | 50.5% | 52.6% |
52.1% together, 40.5% for him apart and 52.4% for Pastrnak apart. He was worse away from Pastrnak, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Pastrnak did.
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 2023-24, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.