This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Colton Sissons
Nashville Predators Center
One hundred and eighty-eight attacking-zone draws against 363 defensive ones — the sixth percentile in the league.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | NSH | 17 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 7.7 | 10:37 |
| 2015-16 | NSH | 34 | 4 | 2 | 6 | +5 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 16.0 | 9:58 |
| 2016-17 | NSH | 58 | 8 | 2 | 10 | +11 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 42 | 19.1 | 11:07 |
| 2017-18 | NSH | 81 | 9 | 18 | 27 | +2 | 42 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 120 | 7.5 | 16:06 |
| 2018-19 | NSH | 75 | 15 | 15 | 30 | +20 | 23 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 111 | 13.5 | 16:03 |
| 2019-20 | NSH | 57 | 9 | 6 | 15 | -2 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 52 | 17.3 | 14:20 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 54 | 8 | 7 | 15 | +2 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 58 | 13.8 | 14:21 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 79 | 7 | 21 | 28 | +2 | 30 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 87 | 8.1 | 16:10 |
| 2022-23 | NSH | 82 | 12 | 18 | 30 | -4 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 87 | 13.8 | 15:50 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 537 | 73 | 92 | 165 | +36 | 181 | 3 | 4 | 11 | 595 | 12.3 | 14:36 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
12 goals and 18 assists in all 82 games — 30 points — with twenty penalty minutes. Minus-4, 15:50 a night, 87 shots at 13.8 per cent.
44.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 17th percentile, with his ice at 35-41 against an expectation of 36.85-46.36 — five goals better at the defensive end than the chances deserved.
And the reason the 17th percentile does not read as a failure: he started 34.1 per cent of his five-on-five shifts in the attacking zone, the 6th percentile in the league. One hundred and eighty-eight attacking draws against 363 defensive ones. That is the hardest deployment given to any Nashville forward who played all eighty-two games, and thirty points came out of it.
Nine seasons, 537 games, 165 points, all of them in Nashville.
The Finesse Game
87 shots at a median of 25 feet, 36 per cent from inside twenty and 16 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 11 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 72 shots, 11 goals, 15.28 per cent.
Eleven long shots across eighty-two games is one of the most disciplined charts in this book, and 15.28 per cent from inside forty is a good rate. Eighty-seven shots is a low volume, and that is the assignment rather than the player.
97.6 mph at the 90th percentile — the second-hardest registered shot among Nashville forwards behind Gurianov’s 100.0, on five slap shots, so read it lightly.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 200, and twenty penalty minutes in eighty-two games.
Top speed 22.4 mph, the 53rd percentile; bursts 0.9 a game, the 48th; 2.37 miles a game, the 36th.
Twenty penalty minutes across a full season of the sixth-percentile zone starts is a remarkable piece of discipline. A checking centre taking two shifts in three in his own end has every opportunity to foul and he does not.
He wins faceoffs, kills penalties and finishes checks, and he has done all three for nine years in one place.
The Intangibles
Fiftieth overall in 2012 out of Kelowna, and never anywhere but Nashville.
This is the least glamorous good player in the chapter. Thirty points from the hardest forward assignment on the club, eighty-two games, twenty penalty minutes, and a chance share that looks bad until the deployment is attached to it.
The book records the 17th percentile and records the 6th-percentile zone start beside it, and asks the reader to hold both.
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
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
34% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He wins faceoffs, kills penalties and finishes checks, and he has done all three for nine years in one place.”
“He wins faceoffs, kills penalties and finishes checks, and he has done all three for nine years in one place.”
“A checking centre taking two shifts in three in his own end has every opportunity to foul and he does not.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,004 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44.3%
- 17th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.8%
- 16th 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: 35 for, 41 against. Expected: 36.9 and 46.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 63 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 60th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.87 a game
- Distance
- 2.37 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.6 mph
- 97th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1004 minutes at five-on-five
- Yakov Trenin48%
- Cole Smith38%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- NSH took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.3% — 2.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,004 minutes at five-on-five — 58th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yakov Trenin | 40.0% | 47.8% | 51.2% |
| Ryan McDonagh | 38.8% | 47.3% | 47.5% |
| Cole Smith | 44.5% | 44.2% | 50.1% |
40.0% together, 47.8% for him apart and 51.2% for Trenin apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
131 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.