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

Dougie Hamilton

40 points in 64 games and 186 shots, and a third consecutive season interrupted.

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

2012-13	BOS	42	5	11	16	+4	14	2	0	0	83	6.0	17:08
2013-14	BOS	64	7	18	25	+22	40	2	0	1	114	6.1	19:06
2014-15	BOS	72	10	32	42	-3	41	5	0	2	188	5.3	21:20
2015-16	CGY	82	12	31	43	-14	46	5	0	3	190	6.3	19:46
2016-17	CGY	81	13	37	50	+12	64	2	0	5	222	5.9	19:41
2017-18	CGY	82	17	27	44	+1	64	6	0	4	270	6.3	21:32
2018-19	CAR	82	18	21	39	0	54	2	0	2	259	7.0	19:40
2019-20	CAR	47	14	26	40	+30	32	2	0	3	170	8.2	23:17
2020-21	CAR	55	10	32	42	+20	35	2	1	2	180	5.6	22:43
2021-22	NJD	62	9	21	30	-19	34	2	0	1	197	4.6	21:13
2022-23	NJD	82	22	52	74	+23	50	8	0	7	275	8.0	21:46
2023-24	NJD	20	5	11	16	-8	20	4	0	0	61	8.2	20:59
2024-25	NJD	64	9	31	40	+8	30	5	0	3	186	4.8	19:51
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	835	151	350	501	+76	524	47	1	33	2395	6.3	20:36

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

9 goals and 31 assists in 64 games for 40 points, plus-8, on 19:51 a night and 186 shots.

51.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 64th percentile, with on-ice goals of 54-42 against an expected 45.5-43.5. 64 games, after 20 the season before.

The Finesse Game

The point shot is among the best in the league — heavy, quick from a set position, and 186 attempts in 64 games is an enormous volume that makes the power play work.

31 assists in 64 games is a first-pair rate and the first pass is genuinely good. He is one of the better offensive defencemen of his generation and it has never been in doubt.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 230, and he does not use it. He does not clear a crease decisively, does not win board battles by force, and defends with reach rather than with weight.

30 penalty minutes over 64 games. The body is the issue — a torn pectoral, a broken jaw, and 84 games across two seasons.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, five organisations, a long contract, and a decade of producing points and criticism in equal measure.

At 32 the projection is 60 games and 45 points. New Jersey’s power play was 1st in the league and he is a large part of the reason; the club has had to run it without him for a third of two seasons.

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
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.

sheltered· is started in the attacking end
61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“31 assists in 64 games is a first-pair rate and the first pass is genuinely good.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-6 and 230, and he does not use it.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a crease decisively, does not win board battles by force, and defends with reach rather than with weight.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not clear a crease decisively, does not win board battles by force, and defends with reach rather than with weight.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He does not clear a crease decisively, does not win board battles by force, and defends with reach rather than with weight.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,011 minutes

Expected goals: 51.1%; 64th pct
Shot attempts: 52.2%; 75th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 42 against. Expected: 45.5 and 43.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

64th

The two rank him within 4 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 · 64 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 67th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.22 a game
Distance: 2.96 miles a game
Hardest shot: 96.8 mph; 86th 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 · 1011 minutes at five-on-five

Brenden Dillon71%
Luke Hughes12%

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 51.1% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,011 minutes at five-on-five — 63rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brenden Dillon	51.9%	48.9%	45.6%
Jack Hughes	56.0%	47.4%	57.3%
Jesper Bratt	54.5%	49.3%	51.2%

51.9% together, 48.9% for him apart and 45.6% for Dillon apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

273 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.