Vladislav Gavrikov

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

6 goals and 13 assists in 72 games — 19 points — split between Columbus and Los Angeles. Plus-4, 21:58 a night, 89 shots, 38 penalty minutes.

48.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 41st percentile — the only Los Angeles defenceman under fifty, and the figure includes fifty-odd games in Columbus, which finished twenty-ninth in chances and thirty-first in goaltending. His ice went 44-52 against an expectation of 52.57-55.16.

Read that split before judging the number. Nine goals short at the offensive end is a club problem, not a pairing problem.

Four seasons, 276 games, 82 points.

The Finesse Game

89 shots at a median of 42 feet, 27 per cent from inside twenty — the highest close-range share of any Los Angeles defenceman — and 52 per cent from beyond forty.

Beyond forty: 45 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 41 shots, 6 goals, 14.63 per cent.

All six goals came from inside forty feet and forty-five long shots produced nothing. The book has run this test on every blue line in the edition and it keeps returning the same answer.

94.2 mph at the 73rd percentile, on six slap shots — a high reading from a man who almost never takes the shot the measurement is built on, which is the least reliable version of that number.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210, and 38 penalty minutes.

Top speed 23.3 mph, the 93rd percentile — the fastest defenceman on this roster by a wide margin, on a blue line whose other three regulars sit at the 19th, 9th and 7th percentiles.

Bursts 0.8 a game, the 43rd; 2.83 miles a game, the 69th.

He is heavy and he closes quickly, which is a rare combination and the reason Los Angeles paid a first-round pick to get him at the deadline. He plays a punishing gap and is willing to finish a check at the far blue line.

The Intangibles

One hundred and fifty-ninth overall in 2015, four seasons in the KHL after the draft, and an NHL debut at twenty-three.

42.4 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 19th percentile.

What Los Angeles has bought is a top-four defenceman who can skate, on a club where nobody else on the blue line can. Whether the 41st-percentile chance share was Columbus or was him is the one question this book cannot answer with a half-season.