Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas has hit some home runs over the past year-and-a-half, and the most recent of those has been the trade for forward Egor Chinakhov. Since coming over from the Columbus
Blue Jackets, Chinakhov has become an immediate impact player for the Penguins with eight goals and 12 total points in his first 18 games, while forming an instant chemistry on their second line alongside Evgeni Malkin and Tommy Novak.
Chinakhov has always had talent and an electric shot, but consistency, playing time and trust from his coaching staff with the Blue Jackets always seemed to hold him back.
He has certainly shown previous flashes of being a productive player. He just never consistently put it all together. At age 23 there is still time for him to do exactly that.
He scored 16 goals in 53 games during the 2023-24 season, and then seven goals in 30 games a year ago. Between the two seasons that is 23 goals over a full-season’s worth of games. That is pretty productive.
For whatever reason, things did not work out for him this season with Dean Evason, resulting in the trade to the Penguins where the fresh start has done wonders for him.
The question now is how many goals can he score the rest of the way? What is a realistic expectation?
When trying to answer a question like this there are two primary areas you want to look at: How many shots is the player generating, and what sort of shooting percentage are they working with compared to the larger sample size of their career.
The one thing about Chinakhov’s time with the Penguins so far is that he has had a pretty significant shooting percentage spike. He is up over 20 percent as of Tuesday, which is double what he shot with the Blue Jackets over the first 204 games of his career and seven points above his previous career high.
At some point he is going to regress back down to his normal career levels.
Maybe that happens after the Olympic break.
Maybe it happens in the playoffs.
Maybe it happens next season.
Eventually it will happen. The best way to counter that is through shot volume, and that is the encouraging thing about what Chinakhov has done so far with the Penguins. He is not only putting more pucks in the net, he is also putting more pucks ON the net.
In 18 games with the Penguins this season he already has more total shot attempts and more shots on goal than he did in 29 games with the Blue Jackets.
He has also seen a huge increase in his per 60 minutes numbers across the board, in terms of total shot attempts, shot son goal, scoring chances, high-danger changes and individual expected goals. Those are encouraging signs. It indicates the process is there, and given how good his shot is, more shots on goal is exactly what you want.
The Penguins have 26 games remaining, and right now Chinakhov has averaged just over two shots on goal per game for the Penguins.
If he maintains that pace that is roughly another 52 shots on goal between now and the end of the regular season.
If he somehow keeps scoring on 20 percent of his shots, that would be another 10 goals, which would give him 18 goals as a Penguins and 21 goals for the season.
If his shooting percentage went down to 14 percent, which is his previous career high, that would be another seven goals and give him 15 with the Penguins and 18 for the season.
If he shot at his previous career shooting percentage of 10 percent that would be another 5-6 goals, give him 13-14 with the Penguins, and 16-17 for the season.
I do not think the shot volume is going to be a problem. Especially playing on a line with Malkin and Novak and even more especially if he keeps getting additional ice-time. That means it is going to be all about what sort of shooting percentage he has the rest of the way. I think somewhere between the 20 percent he has right now and his 10 percent career average is a reasonable bet. It allows for some regression to the mean, while also maintains a relatively high level given his shot and linemates. So let’s say he shoots in the 14-15 percent range and we set the over/under for the rest of the season at 7.5 goals.
Does he beat it or come in under? If he could reach that level and get to 15 goals in a half-season with the Penguins, that would be a massive win for the team.
