Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

44

Vladislav Gavrikov

New York Rangers Defense

82 games at 23:05 a night in Los Angeles at plus-26, and the reason this blue line looks different.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20CBJ6951318+118001816.218:59
2020-21CBJ5521012-1314001484.219:24
2021-22CBJ8052833-3680011084.622:17
2022-23CBJ/LAK7261319+438012896.721:58
2023-24LAK7761723+9280011145.320:37
2024-25LAK8252530+26280001124.523:05
2025-26 so far
Career43529106135+241940165525.321:12

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

5 goals and 25 assists in all 82 games for Los Angeles — 30 points, plus-26, at 23:05 a night.

112 shots at 4.5 per cent. The point of the season is the ice time and the assignment underneath it: he took the hardest defensive minutes on a club that finished among the best in the league at suppressing chances, and he did it for a full year without missing.

The Finesse Game

The puck game is deliberately small and it is not a weakness. He makes the short, correct first pass and gets off the puck early rather than carrying it, so the breakout starts on time and almost never dies on his stick.

There is no offence here beyond that and there is not meant to be. 29 goals in 435 career games is the whole record, and a man playing twenty-three minutes without producing points is being paid for the other end of the rink.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210, and he defends the front of his own net by force. He is difficult to move once he has decided where to stand, he closes a rush by stepping up rather than by backing off, and he finishes the check when it is there.

28 penalty minutes in 82 games at twenty-three minutes a night is the number that matters. A heavy defenceman who almost never reaches is rare, and it is the specific thing this club has been missing behind Adam Fox for years.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick who did not arrive from Russia until he was 23, and who has now played 435 NHL games for three clubs without ever being the story.

He was signed in July on a long contract at 29, which is the age at which this kind of player is bought and the age at which the last two years of the deal are the price of the first three. For a club that was 28th at suppressing chances, it is the correct thing to have bought.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,526 minutes

Expected goals
54.5%
88th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.3%
89th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 47 against. Expected: 59.6 and 49.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
51st
Numbers
88th

The numbers rank him 37 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 496 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with LAK · 1526 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, 2024-25

The club
LAK took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.5% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,526 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mikey Anderson54.5%54.4%52.7%
Adrian Kempe46.1%58.4%51.7%
Anze Kopitar45.6%58.6%52.4%

54.5% together, 54.4% for him apart and 52.7% for Anderson apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

168 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.