This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Dawson Mercer

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.

49.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 50th 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.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“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.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“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.”
forechecks-aggressivelypresent and ordinary· first man in, and on the puck
“He is honest on the forecheck without winning many pucks and does not play a heavy game.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He is honest on the forecheck without winning many pucks and does not play a heavy game.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is honest on the forecheck without winning many pucks and does not play a heavy game.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,075 minutes

Expected goals: 49.8%; 51st pct
Shot attempts: 49.7%; 49th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 33 against. Expected: 41.8 and 42.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

51st

The two rank him within 9 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 637 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 62nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.41 a game
Distance: 2.88 miles a game
Hardest shot: 82.8 mph; 31st 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1075 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, 2024-25

The club: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.8% — 0.9 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	53.3%	46.3%	54.9%
Johnathan Kovacevic	49.1%	50.2%	53.5%
Nico Hischier	49.8%	49.8%	56.0%

53.3% together, 46.3% for him apart and 54.9% 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.