Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

81

Jonathan Marchessault

Nashville Predators Center

A Conn Smythe winner two years earlier: 21 goals in his first Nashville season after 42 in his last Vegas one.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2012-13CBJ2000-10000010:57
2014-15TBL2101+10000333.311:57
2015-16TBL4571118-1017401818.612:05
2016-17FLA75302151-213880619315.516:55
2017-18VGK77274875+364060626810.117:30
2018-19VGK82253459+2525062789.018:09
2019-20VGK66222547+6286032359.417:17
2020-21VGK55182644+193930417610.217:25
2021-22VGK76303666+33650425111.917:34
2022-23VGK76282957+22190423412.017:08
2023-24VGK82422769-24080526615.817:54
2024-25NSH78213556-293740420610.217:59
2025-26 so far
Career716251292543+634858043219111.517:11

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

78 games, 21 goals and 35 assists for 56 points at 17:59 a night, on 206 shots at 10.19 per cent. 37 penalty minutes. Minus-29.

A 48 per cent chance share, with on-ice goals of 29-41 against an expected 40.11-43.38 — eleven goals short at one end, two better than deserved at the other. 206 shots and 21 goals is a five-point drop in conversion from the season before on almost identical volume. This was the first year of the five-year contract signed in July 2024, after winning the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe with Vegas in 2023 and scoring 42 goals in 2023-24.

The Finesse Game

The release is quick and comes out of a low, compact stance, and at 5-9 he creates his own shooting lane by changing the angle rather than by beating a man outright. 41 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet, which for a winger of his size is a considerable amount of traffic to stand in.

The playmaking is genuinely good and consistently underrated — 35 assists on a club that scored 204 goals. He sees the weak-side option before the puck arrives. What has gone is the first step that made him dangerous off the rush in Vegas.

The Physical Game

185 pounds, and the game has always been built on being difficult to catch rather than difficult to move. He goes to the net front and he is removed from it by anybody who decides to.

37 penalty minutes, most of them earned competing in places his size does not entitle him to be.

The Intangibles

He has been written off at every stage of a career that began undrafted, continued through waivers, and turned on an expansion draft — and he has scored twenty goals in nine of the last ten seasons. That is the relevant history.

A 34-year-old on a five-year contract coming off his worst full season in six is the relevant risk, and both things are true at once.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,020 minutes

Expected goals
48%
31st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.3%
35th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 41 against. Expected: 40.1 and 43.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
64th
Numbers
31st

The report ranks him 33 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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 · 1020 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
NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.0% — 1.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,020 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Steven Stamkos48.8%47.2%45.3%
Filip Forsberg47.9%48.2%47.4%
Brady Skjei45.8%49.5%47.3%

48.8% together, 47.2% for him apart and 45.3% for Stamkos apart. Stamkos was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Stamkos 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

264 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.