This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Pavel Zacha
Boston Bruins Center
47 points in a first-line role, and the most quietly useful forward on a bad team.
| 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 | BOS | 82 | 14 | 33 | 47 | -8 | 21 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 132 | 10.6 | 19:04 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 628 | 125 | 217 | 342 | -36 | 165 | 34 | 7 | 24 | 1056 | 11.8 | 16:31 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
14 goals and 33 assists in 82 games for 47 points, minus-8, on 19:04 a night with 5 game-winners.
50.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 54th percentile. His on-ice goals were 51-48 against an expected 46-45 — outscored by 8 on chances that were roughly even, which was the story of most of this roster.
The Finesse Game
A 6-4 centre with better hands than the frame suggests and a habit of making the simple play quickly. 42 per cent of his attempts come from inside 20 feet and only 10 per cent from beyond 40, so he plays inside rather than on the perimeter.
The playmaking is the strength — 33 assists — and it is largely a matter of holding the puck one beat longer than a defenceman expects. There is no rush game and the shot is ordinary; he creates from below the goal line and in the slot.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 211, and he uses it properly on the wall without being a hitter. He wins his share of pucks, protects them with his back to pressure, and is difficult to move off a net front.
21 penalty minutes over 82 games. Four consecutive full seasons — the durability is genuine.
The Intangibles
A 6th overall pick who was a disappointment in New Jersey and has been a useful top-six forward here for three years without ever being what the draft position implied.
That is a fair place to have landed. On a good club he is an excellent third forward on a scoring line; on this one he was asked to be the second option and the numbers show what that costs.
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
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
64% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“The playmaking is the strength — 33 assists — and it is largely a matter of holding the puck one beat longer than a defenceman expects.”
“He wins his share of pucks, protects them with his back to pressure”
“he uses it properly on the wall without being a hitter”
“is difficult to move off a net front”
“There is no rush game”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,099 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.1%
- 54th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.1%
- 44th 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: 51 for, 48 against. Expected: 45.6 and 45.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 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, 2024-25 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 44th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.16 a game
- Distance
- 3.11 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.0 mph
- 72nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 1099 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, 2024-25
- The club
- BOS took 48.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 1.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,099 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Pastrnak | 51.7% | 44.8% | 50.2% |
| Morgan Geekie | 52.8% | 43.8% | 52.4% |
| Mason Lohrei | 50.1% | 50.1% | 46.3% |
51.7% together, 44.8% for him apart and 50.2% 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
199 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.