Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

10

J.T. Miller

New York Rangers Center

70 points across two clubs and a return to the organisation that drafted him fourteen years ago.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2012-13NYR26224-78100434.713:31
2013-14NYR30336-618000466.511:27
2014-15NYR58101323+5232039210.912:42
2015-16NYR82222143+104620513516.315:02
2016-17NYR82223456+172123613216.716:22
2017-18NYR/TBL82233558-440110514316.117:01
2018-19TBL75133447+83040410812.014:40
2019-20VAN69274572+114790316516.420:06
2020-21VAN53153146-74331410614.120:58
2021-22VAN80326799+154780620615.521:05
2022-23VAN81325082-760115322314.320:41
2023-24VAN813766103+3258102919419.119:29
2024-25VAN/NYR72224870-65550213716.118:12
2025-26 so far
Career871260449709+61496681150173015.017:31

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

22 goals and 48 assists in 72 games between Vancouver and New York — 70 points, minus-6, at 18:12 a night with 55 penalty minutes.

50.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 54th percentile, across 907 minutes, with the on-ice goals 37-33 against an even expectation. He was traded in January to the club that drafted him in 2011 and produced at the same rate on both sides of it.

The Finesse Game

He handles the puck at pace and makes his living below the goal line, where he holds it under pressure and waits for a second man to arrive. 449 career assists is the evidence and 48 in a 72-game season says nothing has come off it.

The shot is genuine and the shot chart is the reason he keeps scoring: 37 per cent of his attempts came from inside 20 feet at a median of 29, and 16.1 per cent is a finishing rate a distance shooter does not post. He goes to the net and he arrives with the puck.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 211, and he is difficult and he means to be. He finishes checks, he wins the wall, and 55 penalty minutes in 72 games is the receipt for a game played permanently on the edge of one.

The edge is also the liability and it always has been. He argues, he retaliates, and the second penalty of a sequence is regularly his. On a club that finished 18th at killing them, that is not a free trait.

The Intangibles

Drafted 15th overall here in 2011, traded to Tampa at 24, to Vancouver at 26, made himself a 100-point centre there, and came back at 31.

871 games and 709 points, and a reputation as a difficult man in a room that followed him out of two organisations. He is the most competitive player on this roster and the one most likely to cost it a goal by being so, and both halves are the reason he was acquired.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 907 minutes

Expected goals
50.1%
54th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.6%
60th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 33 against. Expected: 34.8 and 34.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
91st
Numbers
54th

The report ranks him 37 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 496 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 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 with VAN · 533 minutes at five-on-five

  • Brock Boeser64%
  • Jake DeBrusk26%
  • Conor Garland25%

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
NYR took 47.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
The role
907 minutes at five-on-five — 47th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brock Boeser54.0%47.3%45.1%
Quinn Hughes57.5%46.6%52.2%
Mika Zibanejad54.1%48.9%48.8%

54.0% together, 47.3% for him apart and 45.1% for Boeser 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

210 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 22 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.