This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Valeri Nichushkin

Twenty-five goals from 62 per cent slot shots at a median 20 feet, with a top speed at the 94th percentile.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2013-14	DAL	79	14	20	34	+20	8	2	0	2	128	10.9	14:58
2014-15	DAL	8	0	1	1	-5	2	0	0	0	6	0.0	13:46
2015-16	DAL	79	9	20	29	+2	12	1	0	1	139	6.5	13:56
2018-19	DAL	57	0	10	10	-4	0	0	0	0	65	0.0	11:55
2019-20	COL	65	13	14	27	+26	14	1	1	3	113	11.5	14:04
2020-21	COL	55	10	11	21	+9	4	0	1	4	98	10.2	14:05
2021-22	COL	62	25	27	52	+21	14	5	2	5	180	13.9	19:02
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	405	71	103	174	+69	54	9	4	15	729	9.7	14:40

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

25 goals and 27 assists in 62 games — 52 points at 19:02 a night, plus-21, with 14 penalty minutes. Colorado won the Stanley Cup.

57.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 909 minutes, the 92nd percentile among forwards, and 58.5 per cent of the shot attempts, the 97th. His ice went 53-34 against an expectation of 43.27-32.57.

Twenty-five goals is a career high by eleven — he had scored 46 in the six seasons before it.

The Finesse Game

62 per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 84th percentile among forwards, on a median distance of 20 feet at the 17th. He scores from the paint and almost nowhere else, and 13.9 per cent of 180 attempts went in.

2.55 even-strength points per 60 is the 86th percentile and only 17 per cent of his points came on the power play. This is a five-on-five scorer, which on a club whose top two forwards live on the man advantage is what makes him valuable.

86.3 mph is the 24th percentile among forwards. There is no shot; there is a stick in the blue paint.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 210. 1:45 a night shorthanded is the 83rd percentile among forwards and 4.53 hits is the 58th.

23.4 mph is the 94th percentile among forwards and 11.4 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 92nd, with 10.00 miles per 60 at the 81st. A 6-4 winger who is genuinely fast, gets to top gear constantly and covers ground — there is no part of the skating profile that is ordinary.

0.36 penalties taken per 60 is the 16th percentile — 14 penalty minutes in 62 games.

The Intangibles

Tenth overall in 2013 by Dallas, and 405 NHL games at 27 with 174 points, a career plus-69, and now a Stanley Cup.

Two seasons in the KHL in the middle of his twenties and 71 goals in nine years. His chance share holds up everywhere on this roster — 60.9 per cent with Cale Makar, 55.0 with Makar off; 58.7 with Nazem Kadri, 56.0 without. He is the least-discussed important player on a championship team.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 50.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.7, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He scores from the paint and almost nowhere else, and 13.9 per cent of 180 attempts went in.”
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“A 6-4 winger who is genuinely fast, gets to top gear constantly and covers ground”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 909 minutes

Expected goals: 57.1%; 94th pct
Shot attempts: 58.5%; 98th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 34 against. Expected: 43.3 and 32.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

96th

Numbers

94th

The two rank him within 2 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2021-22 · 62 games

Top speed: 23.4 mph; 96th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.61 a game
Distance: 3.17 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.3 mph; 46th pct

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

2021-22 · 909 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, 2021-22

The club: COL took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.1% — 5.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 909 minutes at five-on-five — 51st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cale Makar	60.9%	54.3%	55.0%
Devon Toews	60.1%	54.8%	54.0%
Nazem Kadri	58.7%	56.0%	52.8%

60.9% together, 54.3% for him apart and 55.0% for Makar apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

221 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.