Armchair Hockey Scout

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2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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93

Zakhar Bardakov

Colorado Avalanche Center

A seventh-round Russian who arrived at 24 and played 60 games without anyone noticing.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26COL601910+614000352.97:12
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—601910+614000352.97:12

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

1 goal and 10 points in 60 games, plus-6, on 7 minutes a night — the least ice time of any regular on the roster. That is his entire NHL career.

The Finesse Game

There is almost nothing to evaluate. 35 shots in 60 games, 1 goal, and a role that involves forechecking and changing. He did not look out of place, which for a seventh-round pick in his first North American season is the whole story.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 198, and he plays a willing, physical fourth-line game — the reason he stayed in the lineup for 60 games at 7 minutes a night.

The Intangibles

The 203rd pick, developed entirely in Russia, and an NHL regular at 24 on a contending team. That path almost never works.

The plus-6 in the smallest role on the team is quietly encouraging. Everything else about him is unknown, and 60 games at 7 minutes is not enough to change that.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 422 minutes

Expected goals
53.2%
78th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.7%
90th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 17 for, 11 against. Expected: 16.3 and 14.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
61st
Numbers
78th

The 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 — 74 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 · 60 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
48th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.13 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
1.19 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
85.0 mph
51st pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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

1

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 12 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 422 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
COL took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.2% — 3.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 422 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Parker Kelly53.7%52.6%56.7%
Gavin Brindley51.2%54.7%49.9%
Brent Burns50.5%54.5%55.5%

53.7% together, 52.6% for him apart and 56.7% for Kelly apart. Kelly 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

61 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.