This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Dawson Mercer
New Jersey Devils Center
36 points and 52 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and a fourth season that looked like the third.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 328 | 83 | 84 | 167 | -25 | 87 | 14 | 3 | 13 | 590 | 14.1 | 17:03 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
19 goals and 17 assists in 82 games for 36 points, plus-4, on 17:53 a night with 6 on the power play.
49.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 49th percentile. 52 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 19, and 13.5 per cent conversion on 141 attempts.
The Finesse Game
A straightforward interior forward. He gets to the net, shoots from close range, and does not create much for anybody — 17 assists in 82 games at 18 minutes a night is thin.
141 shots is a moderate volume and the release is decent. The shot chart is genuinely good and the production has now sat between 33 and 56 points for four seasons.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 180, and light. He is honest on the forecheck without winning many pucks and does not play a heavy game.
16 penalty minutes over 82 games is disciplined. Four consecutive 82-game seasons — he has not missed an NHL game in his career.
The Intangibles
A first-round pick who arrived at 19 and has played every game since, and a 56-point season at 21 that has not been matched.
At 24 the projection is a third-line forward who scores 20 and never misses. The club has now given him four seasons of top-nine minutes to prove otherwise.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,075 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.7%
- 50th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.3%
- 44th 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: 30 for, 34 against. Expected: 41.4 and 41.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 8 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 1075 minutes at five-on-five
- Timo Meier45%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.7% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,075 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timo Meier | 52.4% | 47.0% | 54.8% |
| Johnathan Kovacevic | 49.5% | 49.9% | 54.5% |
| Nico Hischier | 50.4% | 49.4% | 56.3% |
52.4% together, 47.0% for him apart and 54.8% 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
200 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.