Rickard Rakell

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

70 games between Anaheim and Pittsburgh, 20 goals and 21 assists at 17:59 a night, even, twelve penalty minutes, 184 shots. Thirtieth overall in 2011 by Anaheim, ten seasons, 569 games, 352 points.

The Finesse Game

1.69 even-strength points per 60 is the 43rd percentile and twenty-four per cent of his points came on the power play off 2:17 a night at the 68th.

8.77 shots per 60 is the 73rd percentile at 10.9 per cent, from a 26-foot median with forty-nine per cent from the slot. Ordinary volume, ordinary conversion, ordinary geography — this is a file with almost nothing extreme in it on the offensive side.

1.33 takeaways per 60 is the 28th percentile against 1.62 giveaways at the 55th.

53.2 per cent of the expected goals and 51.8 per cent of the attempts, out of 62.8 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 26th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. That is one of the thirty softest chairs in hockey, and half of it was taken in Anaheim.

His ice went 54-40 against an expectation of 48.31-42.47 — six goals of surplus in front.

The Physical Game

4.72 hits per 60 is the 59th percentile at 6-1 and 194 pounds, and 2.10 blocks the 73rd.

0.29 penalties taken per 60 is the 9th-fewest of the 393 forwards who played forty games, and twelve penalty minutes in seventy games is one of the cleanest seasons anywhere in this book. 0.38 penalties drawn per 60 is the 10th percentile — he is barely involved in either direction.

The Intangibles

21.7 mph is the 13th-slowest of the 365 forwards the tracking covers and 2.9 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 18th percentile.

Against 9.97 miles per 60 at the 78th. A great deal of ground at a slow pace — the same signature Evgeni Malkin and Danton Heinen carry, and the one that describes most of this forward group.

His shot is 94.1 mph, the 78th percentile, so the twenty goals are not a placement trick.

He is 29 with 158 career goals and two thirty-goal seasons behind him, thirty-three in 2016-17 and thirty-four in 2017-18, both in Anaheim. The scoring is real and unremarkable, the discipline is genuinely exceptional, and the skating is the number that decides how the next three seasons go.