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

Josh Morrissey

Sixty-two points at 24:23 a night from a 195-pound defenceman, and 22 penalty minutes.

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

2015-16	WPG	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0.0	15:54
2016-17	WPG	82	6	14	20	+6	38	1	0	3	99	6.1	19:29
2017-18	WPG	81	7	19	26	+15	47	0	0	0	102	6.9	20:27
2018-19	WPG	59	6	25	31	+9	14	3	1	2	95	6.3	22:24
2019-20	WPG	65	5	26	31	+1	24	1	0	0	120	4.2	22:46
2020-21	WPG	56	4	17	21	-1	25	1	0	0	116	3.5	23:33
2021-22	WPG	79	12	25	37	-3	66	6	0	3	173	6.9	23:40
2022-23	WPG	78	16	60	76	+2	41	2	0	6	172	9.3	24:14
2023-24	WPG	81	10	59	69	+34	44	2	0	1	196	5.1	24:11
2024-25	WPG	80	14	48	62	+17	22	3	0	2	172	8.1	24:23
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	662	80	293	373	+80	321	19	1	17	1246	6.4	22:45

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

14 goals and 48 assists in 80 games — 62 points at 24:23 a night, the largest assignment on the club, plus-17, with 3 power-play goals on 172 shots, and 22 penalty minutes.

54.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 85th percentile, across 1,541 minutes — the most on the roster. His ice went 59-45 against an expectation of 67.10-57.18 — twelve goals of scoring missing and twelve fewer conceded.

The Finesse Game

172 attempts at a median of 51 feet with 76 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, converting at 8.1 per cent for 14 goals — an excellent return from the blue line.

48 assists is the number and 293 in 662 career games is the record. He walks the line, he holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and he carries it out of his own zone rather than passing it out — the skating is what makes twenty-four minutes a night possible at this weight.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 195 and he does not clear his crease by force. He defends with his feet and his stick, he closes gaps early, and he takes the puck before the contact becomes necessary.

22 penalty minutes in 80 games at twenty-four and a half a night is a genuinely low rate for a defenceman playing those minutes. He is essentially never beaten badly enough to have to reach.

The Intangibles

Thirteenth overall in 2013 and 662 games and 373 points, all of it here, with a 76-point season behind him in 2022-23.

He is 30 and has played the hardest minutes on a Presidents’ Trophy club. He has never had a partner of his own quality and has not needed one.

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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
9 of 205 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.4%, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:16 a game at five-on-five, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He walks the line, he holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and **he carries it out of his own zone rather than passing it out** — the skating is what makes twenty-four minutes a night possible at this weight.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**48 assists is the number and 293 in 662 career games is the record.**”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“6-0 and 195 and he does not clear his crease by force.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He defends with his feet and his stick, he closes gaps early, and he takes the puck before the contact becomes necessary.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**22 penalty minutes in 80 games at twenty-four and a half a night** is a genuinely low rate for a defenceman playing those minutes. He is essentially never beaten badly enough to have to reach.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,541 minutes

Expected goals: 54%; 85th pct
Shot attempts: 51.2%; 67th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 45 against. Expected: 67.1 and 57.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

91st

Numbers

85th

The two rank him within 6 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 23.1 mph; 93rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.61 a game
Distance: 3.63 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.0 mph; 78th 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 · 1541 minutes at five-on-five

Dylan DeMelo77%

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: WPG took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.0% — 2.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,541 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dylan DeMelo	53.1%	56.9%	54.5%
Mark Scheifele	55.5%	52.8%	46.2%
Kyle Connor	55.4%	53.0%	46.9%

53.1% together, 56.9% for him apart and 54.5% for DeMelo apart. He was better away from DeMelo, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost DeMelo.

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

269 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 46 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.