This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Valeri Nichushkin
Colorado Avalanche Right Wing
Two penalty minutes in 53 games from a 6-4 winger playing twenty a night.
| 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 | COL | 53 | 17 | 30 | 47 | +15 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 158 | 10.8 | 20:16 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 458 | 88 | 133 | 221 | +84 | 56 | 19 | 5 | 17 | 887 | 9.9 | 15:19 |
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
17 goals and 30 assists in 53 games, plus-15, 20:16 a night. He missed 29 games, which is the recurring sentence of this roster.
52.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 73rd percentile, with his ice at 38-25 against an expectation of 33.07-29.44 — five better than expected for and four better against, which is a good season at both ends.
Eight seasons, 458 games, 221 points, and the whole shape of the career changed in Denver: 88 goals in total, 65 of them in four Colorado seasons.
The Finesse Game
158 shots at a median of 24 feet, 42 per cent from inside twenty.
Inside forty feet: 118 shots on goal, sixteen goals, 13.56 per cent. Beyond forty: 36 shots, one goal.
19 tip-ins and five deflections. He is 6-4 and Colorado use him the way they use Rantanen — at the net, in traffic, on a line that shoots from range and needs a body in front of it.
The shot measures 87.6 mph at the 27th percentile, and the ten power-play goals in 53 games say the position matters more than the release.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 210. 3.21 miles a game at the 91st percentile, 23.5 mph at the 97th — one of the very few men in the league who is that big, that fast and covers that much ground.
Two penalty minutes in 53 games. That is one minor all season from a winger playing twenty minutes a night on a checking assignment, and it is the lowest rate of anyone in this chapter by a distance.
He forechecks hard and finishes checks without ever crossing the line, which is a skill and not an accident at his size.
The Intangibles
Tenth overall in 2013 to Dallas, four disappointing seasons there, two years in the KHL, and then a reinvention in Colorado that nobody predicted.
A Cup in 2022, and a playoff run in which he was one of Colorado’s most productive forwards. He is the third-best forward on this club when available and the availability is the whole argument: 65, 55, 62 and 53 games in his four Colorado years.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.04 penalty minutes a game over 53, 1st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He is 6-4 and Colorado use him the way they use Rantanen — at the net, in traffic, on a line that shoots from range and needs a body in front of it.”
“He forechecks hard and finishes checks without ever crossing the line, which is a skill and not an accident at his size.”
“That is one minor all season from a winger playing twenty minutes a night on a checking assignment”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 756 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.9%
- 74th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54%
- 85th 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: 38 for, 25 against. Expected: 33.1 and 29.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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 · 53 games
- Top speed
- 23.5 mph
- 97th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.53 a game
- Distance
- 3.21 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.6 mph
- 52nd 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 · 756 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, 2022-23
- The club
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.9% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 756 minutes at five-on-five — 35th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Girard | 50.1% | 54.7% | 52.8% |
| Devon Toews | 58.9% | 48.4% | 56.2% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 53.7% | 52.3% | 55.3% |
50.1% together, 54.7% for him apart and 52.8% for Girard apart. He was better away from Girard, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Girard.
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
206 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.