This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jonathan Marchessault

Undrafted, 5-9, 230 goals in 638 games, and forty-two of them last season at 33.

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

2012-13	CBJ	2	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	0	—	10:57
2014-15	TBL	2	1	0	1	+1	0	0	0	0	3	33.3	11:57
2015-16	TBL	45	7	11	18	-10	17	4	0	1	81	8.6	12:05
2016-17	FLA	75	30	21	51	-21	38	8	0	6	193	15.5	16:55
2017-18	VGK	77	27	48	75	+36	40	6	0	6	268	10.1	17:30
2018-19	VGK	82	25	34	59	+2	52	5	0	6	278	9.0	18:09
2019-20	VGK	66	22	25	47	+6	28	6	0	3	235	9.4	17:17
2020-21	VGK	55	18	26	44	+19	39	3	0	4	176	10.2	17:25
2021-22	VGK	76	30	36	66	+3	36	5	0	4	251	11.9	17:34
2022-23	VGK	76	28	29	57	+2	21	9	0	4	234	12.0	17:08
2023-24	VGK	82	42	27	69	-2	40	8	0	5	266	15.8	17:54
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	638	230	257	487	+35	311	54	0	39	1985	11.6	17:05

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

All 82 games in Vegas, 42 goals and 27 assists for 69 points, 8 on the power play, 40 penalty minutes, 17:54 a night and minus-2. He took 50.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,117 minutes, the 56th percentile, and his ice went 54-43 against an expectation of 48.56-47.73, all of it with the Golden Knights.

Five goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and five fewer conceded than they called for. Forty-two goals on an even chance share is a very large amount of finishing from one man.

The Finesse Game

266 shots at a median of 29 feet with 31 per cent from inside 20, converted at 15.8 per cent against a career 11.59.

257 career assists in 638 games. Forty-two goals on 266 shots is eleven above his own career rate and that gap is the risk in the signing. The release is quick and he shoots from the left circle on the power play, which is exactly where Steven Stamkos also shoots from.

The Physical Game

He is 5-9 and 185 and stays out of the corners.

311 career penalty minutes in 638 games is a moderate rate for a man this size and most of it is a stick. He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and is moved off a puck by anybody who reaches him.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Cap-Rouge, eleven seasons across four organisations, and 487 points in 638 games. He won the Stanley Cup in Vegas and was the Conn Smythe winner for it.

He is 33 and has scored 30 or more three times. Nashville has bought the forty-two goals; what it will get is closer to thirty, and thirty is still what this club was short of.

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is 5-9 and 185 and stays out of the corners.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and is moved off a puck by anybody who reaches him.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and is moved off a puck by anybody who reaches him.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He does not forecheck by force, does not win the wall, and is moved off a puck by anybody who reaches him.”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, out of Cap-Rouge, eleven seasons across four organisations, and 487 points in 638 games.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,117 minutes

Expected goals: 50.4%; 56th pct
Shot attempts: 49.2%; 49th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 43 against. Expected: 48.6 and 47.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

72nd

Numbers

56th

The two rank him within 16 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 652 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 21.1 mph; 12th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.28 a game
Distance: 2.71 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.0 mph; 71st 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

2023-24 with VGK · 1117 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, 2023-24

The club: VGK took 51.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.4% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,117 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ivan Barbashev	49.7%	52.0%	50.2%
Jack Eichel	52.4%	48.5%	54.4%
Brayden McNabb	48.9%	51.3%	53.9%

49.7% together, 52.0% for him apart and 50.2% for Barbashev 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

348 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 43 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.