This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Justin Barron
Nashville Predators Defense
Acquired for Alexandre Carrier in November and given 17:26 a night at 23, with 57 per cent of his shots from beyond 40 feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | COL/MTL | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 7.7 | 17:11 |
| 2022-23 | MTL | 39 | 4 | 11 | 15 | -2 | 20 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 40 | 10.0 | 16:18 |
| 2023-24 | MTL | 48 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -3 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 60 | 11.7 | 18:38 |
| 2024-25 | MTL/NSH | 62 | 6 | 7 | 13 | -18 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 8.2 | 17:26 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 156 | 18 | 25 | 43 | -26 | 59 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 186 | 9.7 | 17:30 |
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
62 games, 6 goals and 7 assists for 13 points at 17:26 a night, on 73 shots at 8.22 per cent. 23 penalty minutes. Minus-18. He came from Montreal in November for Alexandre Carrier — a straight one-for-one, a 23-year-old for a 28-year-old.
A 51.3 per cent chance share is above the club average, and the on-ice goals were 32-47 against an expected 36.13-34.57: seven short at one end and seven extra at the other. That is fourteen goals of a season that had nothing to do with him. A right-shot defenceman playing seventeen minutes at 23 on a bad club is a reasonable place to be standing.
The Finesse Game
A genuinely good skater — long stride, comfortable turning under pressure, able to carry the puck out of trouble rather than rimming it. That is why he was a first-round pick and why a third organisation is willing to play him seventeen minutes.
57 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet and 11 per cent from inside 20, and the point shot does not get through traffic reliably. 73 attempts in 62 games is low volume for the ice time, and it is the gap between a defenceman who moves the puck and one who threatens with it.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 198, and neither punishing nor avoidant. He boxes out adequately in front and he does not win a battle by force.
23 penalty minutes is a modest number, and on this roster it reads as much like disengagement as discipline.
The Intangibles
The 25th pick in 2020, traded twice before his 24th birthday — for Artturi Lehkonen, and then for Carrier.
He has never held a job for a full season and has never been given a settled partner. This is his third organisation, and the first one where nobody ahead of him is guaranteed to be there next year.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- 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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“A genuinely good skater — long stride, comfortable turning under pressure, able to carry the puck out of trouble rather than rimming it.”
“6-2 and 198, and neither punishing nor avoidant.”
“He boxes out adequately in front and he does not win a battle by force.”
“23 penalty minutes is a modest number, and on this roster it reads as much like disengagement as discipline.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 901 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.1%
- 64th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53%
- 83rd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 47 against. Expected: 36.1 and 34.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 63 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 — 57 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 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 23.6 mph
- 97th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.40 a game
- Distance
- 2.59 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.5 mph
- 41st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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 · 680 minutes at five-on-five
- Roman Josi33%
- Marc Del Gaizooff the roster21%
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 51.1% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 901 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Josi | 54.6% | 49.8% | 49.8% |
| Steven Stamkos | 55.5% | 49.8% | 45.6% |
| Jonathan Marchessault | 51.3% | 51.1% | 47.0% |
54.6% together, 49.8% for him apart and 49.8% for Josi 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
105 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 57% from beyond forty.