Jason Dickinson

A defensive center who has made a long career out of the shifts nobody wants and the faceoffs nobody counts.

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

2015-16	DAL	1	1	0	1	+1	0	0	0	0	2	50.0	11:55
2016-17	DAL	10	2	0	2	-3	0	0	0	0	9	22.2	11:47
2017-18	DAL	27	0	2	2	-2	17	0	0	0	16	0.0	8:32
2018-19	DAL	67	6	16	22	+9	23	0	0	2	94	6.4	13:22
2019-20	DAL	65	9	12	21	+7	6	0	0	1	85	10.6	14:59
2020-21	DAL	51	7	8	15	-2	18	0	0	2	66	10.6	16:12
2021-22	VAN	62	5	6	11	-1	19	0	0	0	66	7.6	13:03
2022-23	CHI	78	9	21	30	-29	28	1	0	1	114	7.9	15:56
2023-24	CHI	82	22	13	35	+4	43	2	0	4	126	17.5	16:34
2024-25	CHI	59	7	9	16	-11	38	0	0	0	56	12.5	15:42
2025-26	CHI/EDM	64	7	10	17	-10	20	0	1	1	73	9.6	15:32
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	566	75	97	172	-37	212	3	1	11	707	10.6	14:49

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

7 goals and 17 points in 64 games split between Chicago and Edmonton, 15 minutes a night. He has never scored 20 in a season and is not paid to.

The Finesse Game

Modest offensively and honest about it. The shot is ordinary, the hands are ordinary, and the offense he does produce comes from being in the right place after a turnover rather than from creating anything himself.

What he does have is real speed, and he uses it the way a checking center should — closing on defensemen, taking away time on breakouts, and beating forwards back to loose pucks. He is a strong penalty killer for exactly that reason: he pressures the puck without opening a lane behind him.

He wins his share of draws and, more usefully, he wins the ones in his own end late in games.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 200, and he plays a rangy, positional physical game rather than a punishing one. He ends plays by being in the lane, not by running people over. He blocks shots willingly.

The Intangibles

566 games of this is not an accident. Coaches keep employing him because the defensive detail is genuine, and because he can take a defensive-zone draw against a top line without needing to be protected afterward.

The honest limitation: on a team that scores as much as this one, a fourth-line center who contributes nothing offensively is a luxury only if the defensive value is real. In his case it is.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
29.1% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
28% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd 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 · 850 minutes

Expected goals: 45.5%; 19th pct
Shot attempts: 48.1%; 37th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 40 against. Expected: 28.6 and 34.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

61st

Numbers

19th

The report ranks him 42 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 · 64 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 62nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.22 a game
Distance: 2.58 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.3 mph; 72nd 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 — 0 goals, 3 assists, 17 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with CHI · 634 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: EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.5% — 6.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: 850 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ilya Mikheyev	46.0%	44.8%	38.7%
Alex Vlasic	44.5%	46.2%	39.9%
Louis Crevier	44.2%	46.2%	40.9%

46.0% together, 44.8% for him apart and 38.7% for Mikheyev apart. Mikheyev was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Mikheyev than for him.

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

117 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.