Zack Kassian

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

With Edmonton. 6 goals and 13 assists in 58 games — 19 points at 11:47 a night, plus-2, with 2 power-play goals on 58 shots and 63 penalty minutes.

48.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 663 minutes, the 36th percentile — and 51.3 per cent of the shot attempts, the 64th. His ice went 30-29 against an expectation of 26-27.93. Playing behind Connor McDavid’s club flatters everybody, and this is the least flattered version of it: fourth-line minutes at the 10th percentile of ice time.

The Finesse Game

58 attempts at a median of 18 feet, 57 per cent from inside 20, converting at 10.3 per cent. 5.09 shots per 60 is the 13th percentile. He goes to the net and he does not shoot, which for a man of 6-3 and 211 is a strange combination and has been for a decade.

90 goals in 610 career games. There has never been much here and there is less now.

The Physical Game

13.52 hits per 60 is the 96th percentile among forwards. Only a handful of men in hockey finish more checks, and it is the whole job.

0.53 blocks per 60 is the 1st percentile. He hits and he does nothing else defensively, which is a real distinction: a physical forward who does not put himself in front of a puck is a physical forward in the offensive zone only.

1.67 penalties taken per 60 is the 94th percentile and 863 penalty minutes in 610 games is the career behind it, against 0.88 drawn — minus-0.79 net, the 1st percentile. On Arizona’s penalty kill, that arithmetic is worse than it was in Edmonton.

Top speed 22.6 mph at the 61st percentile with 7.9 bursts above 20 mph per 60 at the 76th. He is quicker than he looks and always has been.

The Intangibles

Thirteenth overall in 2009 by Buffalo, and 610 games across Buffalo, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and now Arizona, with a reputation that has followed him to all of them.

He is 31, and Arizona took him from Edmonton because Edmonton needed the cap space. This club is now the place contending teams send contracts they regret, and Kassian is the clearest example on the roster: two years left, no role that helps a rebuild, and a penalty differential the worst penalty kill in hockey cannot absorb.