This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Radek Faksa
Dallas Stars Center
Eight seasons in one organisation as the man who takes the draw against the other club's best line.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | DAL | 45 | 5 | 7 | 12 | +9 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 7.5 | 12:21 |
| 2016-17 | DAL | 80 | 12 | 21 | 33 | -6 | 67 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 132 | 9.1 | 16:10 |
| 2017-18 | DAL | 79 | 17 | 16 | 33 | +21 | 36 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 118 | 14.4 | 15:16 |
| 2018-19 | DAL | 81 | 15 | 15 | 30 | -3 | 54 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 114 | 13.2 | 16:26 |
| 2019-20 | DAL | 66 | 11 | 9 | 20 | -6 | 42 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 109 | 10.1 | 15:53 |
| 2020-21 | DAL | 55 | 6 | 8 | 14 | -15 | 30 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 94 | 6.4 | 17:26 |
| 2021-22 | DAL | 77 | 5 | 14 | 19 | -20 | 52 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 89 | 5.6 | 15:46 |
| 2022-23 | DAL | 81 | 11 | 9 | 20 | +9 | 39 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 88 | 12.5 | 13:43 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 564 | 82 | 99 | 181 | -11 | 336 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 811 | 10.1 | 15:27 |
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
11 goals and 9 assists in 81 games, plus-9, 39 penalty minutes, 13:43 a night — the fewest minutes of his eight seasons.
51.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 933 minutes, the 63rd percentile, with his ice at 26-23 against an expectation of 32.63-30.66. Six short at the offensive end and eight better at the defensive one, which is exactly the trade a checking centre is paid to make.
The plus-9 follows minus-20 and minus-15 in the two years before it. Eight seasons, 564 games, all in Dallas.
The Finesse Game
88 shots at a median of 19 feet, 54 per cent from inside twenty and 13 per cent from beyond forty — one of the closest-range distributions on the club.
Inside forty: 74 shots, eleven goals, 14.86 per cent. Beyond forty: 13 shots, none.
12 tip-ins and 12 backhands out of 88 attempts. He scores from the crease and from behind the net, and 82 goals in 564 games is what a fourth-line centre produces doing that.
94.2 mph at the 73rd percentile, which is beside the point at nineteen feet.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 216. 21.5 mph at the 13th percentile with 0.6 bursts a game at the 27th and 2.22 miles a game at the 26th — slow, and not covering much ground.
That is the tracking line of a defensive-zone centre playing thirteen minutes, and the 63rd-percentile expected-goal share says it works anyway. He wins his draws, he is heavy on the wall, and he does not chase.
39 penalty minutes in 81 games is a moderate rate for the role.
The Intangibles
13th overall in 2012 out of Kitchener, and eight seasons of the same job in the same city.
He is 29, has 181 career points, and has been the checking centre on every good Dallas team of the last six years. The first-round pick implied more; what arrived is a specialist, and Dallas have won a lot of hockey with him in that role.
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.
- durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He wins his draws, he is heavy on the wall, and he does not chase.”
“That is the tracking line of a defensive-zone centre playing thirteen minutes, and the 63rd-percentile expected-goal share says it works anyway.”
“Six short at the offensive end and eight better at the defensive one, which is exactly the trade a checking centre is paid to make.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 933 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.6%
- 64th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.8%
- 69th 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: 26 for, 23 against. Expected: 32.6 and 30.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 40 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 81 games
- Top speed
- 21.5 mph
- 23rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.56 a game
- Distance
- 2.22 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.2 mph
- 88th 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 933 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Seguin20%
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
- DAL took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.6% — 0.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 933 minutes at five-on-five — 51st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Glendening | 48.5% | 53.4% | 41.1% |
| Joel Kiviranta | 50.1% | 52.4% | 43.7% |
| Esa Lindell | 52.0% | 51.3% | 49.6% |
48.5% together, 53.4% for him apart and 41.1% for Glendening apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Glendening behind.
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
118 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.