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Jake Evans

A seventh-round pick who made himself into a penalty-killing centre and has outlasted almost everyone drafted above him.

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

2019-20	MTL	13	2	1	3	+1	0	0	0	0	14	14.3	10:21
2020-21	MTL	47	3	10	13	+2	29	0	1	0	55	5.5	11:50
2021-22	MTL	72	13	16	29	-5	22	0	0	0	124	10.5	15:36
2022-23	MTL	54	2	17	19	-5	28	1	0	0	55	3.6	14:29
2023-24	MTL	82	7	21	28	-1	24	0	1	1	81	8.6	16:01
2024-25	MTL	82	13	23	36	+1	10	0	3	5	80	16.3	15:33
2025-26	MTL	68	12	12	24	-8	28	0	2	2	75	16.0	15:21
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	418	52	100	152	-15	141	1	7	8	484	10.7	14:54

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

12 goals and 24 points in 68 games, minus-8, on 15 minutes a night. That is close to his normal output and the minus is more about deployment than performance.

The Finesse Game

Limited by design. 52 goals in 418 games. He shoots from close range, finishes the occasional shorthanded chance, and does not create much at even strength.

What he has is anticipation. He reads passing lanes as well as anyone on the roster, which is why he is on the penalty kill every night and why he has scored a genuinely unusual number of shorthanded goals for a player with his profile.

He wins faceoffs and can play wing without complaint.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 190, and he plays a positional rather than physical game. He blocks shots, gets in lanes, and does not initiate contact. Durable enough, though he has had serious injuries.

The Intangibles

The 207th pick, 10 years ago, on a roster that has since been rebuilt twice around him. Coaches keep him because the defensive detail is genuine and because he never needs to be told anything twice.

At 30, he is exactly what he will be: a fourth-line centre who kills penalties well. On a team with several young centres arriving, that is a role with a clock on it.

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.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
30% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 821 minutes

Expected goals: 48.4%; 41st pct
Shot attempts: 46.4%; 22nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 32 against. Expected: 30.4 and 32.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

61st

Numbers

41st

The report ranks him 20 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 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, 2025-26 · 68 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 50th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.25 a game
Distance: 2.42 miles a game
Hardest shot: 75.7 mph; 10th 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 — 2 goals, 2 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 821 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: MTL took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.4% — 1.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 821 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Josh Anderson	47.4%	49.6%	45.9%
Mike Matheson	42.6%	52.3%	47.7%
Zachary Bolduc	54.0%	45.0%	50.7%

47.4% together, 49.6% for him apart and 45.9% for Anderson apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

114 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.