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

Jean-Gabriel Pageau

51 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet at 33, 42 points, and the defensive centre on a penalty kill that finished 25th.

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

2012-13	OTT	9	2	2	4	+3	0	0	0	2	14	14.3	11:30
2013-14	OTT	28	2	0	2	-5	12	0	0	0	31	6.5	10:15
2014-15	OTT	50	10	9	19	+4	9	0	2	2	97	10.3	14:11
2015-16	OTT	82	19	24	43	+17	26	1	7	2	133	14.3	16:42
2016-17	OTT	82	12	21	33	+13	24	0	0	2	169	7.1	16:08
2017-18	OTT	78	14	15	29	-14	36	1	1	2	147	9.5	16:44
2018-19	OTT	39	4	8	12	-12	14	0	0	0	83	4.8	17:51
2019-20	OTT/NYI	67	26	16	42	+4	49	5	3	5	151	17.2	19:10
2020-21	NYI	54	14	14	28	+10	10	5	2	3	81	17.3	16:47
2021-22	NYI	77	18	21	39	0	30	4	1	0	126	14.3	17:40
2022-23	NYI	70	13	27	40	-2	14	5	3	2	123	10.6	17:37
2023-24	NYI	82	11	22	33	-8	13	1	1	2	101	10.9	15:55
2024-25	NYI	79	14	28	42	+4	23	2	1	1	120	11.7	17:00
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	797	159	207	366	+14	260	24	21	23	1376	11.6	16:36

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

79 games, 14 goals and 28 assists for 42 points at 17:00 a night, on 120 shots at 11.67 per cent. 23 penalty minutes. Plus-4.

A 52.8 per cent chance share is the second-best among the club’s forwards, and the on-ice goals were 40-34 against an expected 44.32-39.60 — eleven short at one end and four extra at the other. A fifteen-goal swing against a checking centre who was controlling the run of play.

The Finesse Game

51 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 19, which for a defensive centre is an unusually interior profile and the reason 42 points is possible on this ice time.

The faceoff work is genuinely good and the passing is better than the role advertises — 28 assists from a third-line centre on a club that scored 224 goals. He does not carry the puck through anybody and he does not need to.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 180 pounds and he plays a much heavier game than the frame suggests — he finishes checks, he wins pucks below the goal line against bigger men, and he takes the punishment that comes with going to the net.

23 penalty minutes in 79 games doing the hardest defensive work on the roster is a very good rate.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick, thirteen NHL seasons, and a run of playoff scoring in Ottawa that nobody expected and nobody has forgotten.

He is 33 and does the specific job that this club could not do last season — the penalty kill finished 25th in the league with him on it, which is the one number on this page that does not fit the rest.

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
64.2% of his attempts in the slot, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“The faceoff work is genuinely good”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“the passing is better than the role advertises — 28 assists from a third-line centre on a club that scored 224 goals.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not carry the puck through anybody and he does not need to.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“5-11 and 180 pounds and he plays a much heavier game than the frame suggests — he finishes checks”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“he wins pucks below the goal line against bigger men”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He is 33 and does the specific job that this club could not do last season”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 990 minutes

Expected goals: 52.8%; 76th pct
Shot attempts: 53%; 83rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 34 against. Expected: 44.3 and 39.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

30th

Numbers

76th

The numbers rank him 46 points above where the report does. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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 · 79 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 33rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.23 a game
Distance: 2.72 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.4 mph; 63rd 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 · 990 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: NYI took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.8% — 2.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 990 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Anders Lee	54.9%	50.1%	50.8%
Simon Holmstrom	52.6%	52.9%	49.5%
Ryan Pulock	44.4%	56.4%	45.9%

54.9% together, 50.1% for him apart and 50.8% for Lee 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

176 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.