Dawson Mercer

20 goals, and 49 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2021-22	NJD	82	17	25	42	-25	28	2	1	2	154	11.0	16:32
2022-23	NJD	82	27	29	56	+22	14	2	1	6	161	16.8	16:34
2023-24	NJD	82	20	13	33	-26	29	4	0	2	134	14.9	17:13
2024-25	NJD	82	19	17	36	+4	16	6	1	3	141	13.5	17:53
2025-26	NJD	82	20	22	42	-2	33	4	3	1	158	12.7	18:14
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	410	103	106	209	-27	120	18	6	14	748	13.8	17:17

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

20 goals and 22 assists in all 82 games — 42 points, minus-2, at 18:14 a night. His fifth straight season without missing a game.

The Finesse Game

The shot selection is good and getting better. 240 unblocked attempts with 49 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 21, and 18 goals.

He is not a natural finisher and he compensates by refusing to take the easy shot from the outside. 209 points in 410 career games is a solid middle-6 rate.

22 assists is ordinary.

The Physical Game

6 foot even and 180, and light, but he plays a hard forechecking game and does not avoid the interior. 33 penalty minutes.

Durability is the quiet asset here: 410 games in 5 seasons without a single one missed.

The Intangibles

52.1 per cent of the expected goals, 71st percentile, with the chances 52.3 to 48.1 in his favour and the goals 36-47 against.

The same 14-goal hole every Devil has. This club scored 136 5-on-5 goals against 173.9 expected.

8 points in his last 10, 5 of them goals. He is 24, an 18th overall pick, and exactly the sort of player whose counting stats will jump next season without him doing anything differently.

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

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

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,194 minutes

Expected goals: 52.1%; 71st pct
Shot attempts: 52.5%; 78th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 47 against. Expected: 52.3 and 48.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

67th

Numbers

71st

The two rank him within 4 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 — 75 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 29th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.10 a game
Distance: 2.93 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.9 mph; 62nd pct

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

points in his last 10 games — 5 goals, 3 assists, 26 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1194 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: NJD took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.1% — 1.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,194 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Timo Meier	53.3%	50.1%	52.3%
Nico Hischier	55.0%	48.3%	51.9%
Jonas Siegenthaler	49.6%	53.3%	49.0%

53.3% together, 50.1% for him apart and 52.3% for Meier apart. He was worse away from Meier, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Meier did.

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

240 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.