2022 Player Ratings: Tomas Nosek was mostly fine in his first Boston season

Tomas Nosek in 2022

Key stats: 75GP, 3G, 14A, 17PTS

Other stats: 50.4 CF% (5v5), 38.3 oZS% (5v5), 85 hits

Reader rating: 5.1

Writer rating: 6.3

Last summer, Tomas Nosek was brought in to provide a little bit of physicality and a little bit of flexibility in the Bruins’ bottom six.

In that, he mostly succeeded — but the Bruins were likely hoping for a little more production on the scoresheet.

There’s no denying that the B’s bought (relatively) high on Nosek: he was coming off of a career high 8 goals and 18 points (in just 38 games) in 2020-2021.

A lot of that success can be attributed to a 13.6% shooting percentage, and that certainly plummeted back to reality last year (3.6%).

Still, Nosek wasn’t signed to put up 75 points. He was signed to add some new life to the fourth (or third) line and to eat up some difficult minutes as needed.

Nosek wasn’t afraid to throw his weight around, and skated a career high 135 minutes on the penalty kill.

As you can tell from his deployment stats above, he wasn’t exactly given prime offensive shifts and was expected to do more of the yeoman’s work than the superstar’s work.

While he spent most of the season centering the fourth line, Nosek did occasionally see shifts on the third line as Bruce Cassidy mixed things up.

HIs game seemed better suited for the fourth line, however, and that’s likely where he’ll end up to start the season.

Nosek is in the last year of his two-year deal, carrying a cap hit of just $1.75 million. At that low cap hit, Nosek is a good asset for Jim Montgomery: he can kill penalties, put in the “grinder” type shifts, and occasionally chip in with offense.

If he can continue to eat minutes and get last season’s shooting percentage closer to his career average (7.6%), the B’s should be in good shape.

If the shooting percentage woes continue but Nosek keeps up the rest of his game, that’d probably be fine too (albeit a little disappointing).

Nosek was brought in to do a relatively thankless job, and he did it well enough. A little more offense would have been nice, but there’s always next year.