Yan Kuznetsov
Calgary Flames Defense
20 minutes a night in his first full season, and a blue line with nobody better to give them to.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | CGY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 11:58 |
| 2025-26 | CGY | 57 | 4 | 8 | 12 | -8 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 64 | 6.3 | 20:05 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 58 | 4 | 8 | 12 | -9 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 66 | 6.1 | 19:57 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
4 goals and 8 assists in 57 games, minus-8, at 20:05 a night. His first real NHL season, and 58 career games in total.
The Finesse Game
Not present. 81 unblocked attempts from a median of 53 feet with 5 per cent inside 20, 4 goals. 8 assists in 57 games.
He moves it short and safe. There is no evidence yet of a player who will add anything at the offensive blue line.
The Physical Game
6-4, 209, and it is what he is for. He defends the net front, closes hard, and takes the body. 28 penalty minutes in 57 games of heavy minutes is disciplined.
The Intangibles
The results were poor without being the worst here: 46.5 per cent of the expected goals, 24th percentile, with the goals 31-47 across 1,000 minutes and the expected goals 41.3 to 47.5 against.
He is 24, a second-round pick, and playing 20 minutes a night because Calgary’s alternatives are a 20-year-old and a 35-year-old. That is not the same as having earned it, and the club would be better off if it were not true.
2 points in his last 10. This season decides whether he is a third-pair defenceman or the top-four one he is currently being asked to be.
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
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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
3 of 65 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.6%, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,018 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.5%
- 25th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.8%
- 34th 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: 31 for, 47 against. Expected: 41.3 and 47.5.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 17 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2025-26 · 57 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 64th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.68 a game
- Distance
- 2.90 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 100.2 mph
- 97th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
2
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 15 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1018 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, 2025-26
- The club
- CGY took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.5% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,018 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| MacKenzie Weegar | 45.9% | 47.4% | 51.0% |
| Matt Coronato | 45.6% | 46.9% | 45.7% |
| Joel Farabee | 50.7% | 44.8% | 47.5% |
45.9% together, 47.4% for him apart and 51.0% for Weegar apart. Weegar was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
81 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.