This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Michael McCarron
Nashville Predators Center
Thirty attacking-zone draws against a hundred and twenty-seven defensive ones, at six foot six.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | MTL | 20 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -10 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 41 | 2.4 | 11:41 |
| 2016-17 | MTL | 31 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -4 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 3.2 | 9:53 |
| 2017-18 | MTL | 18 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0.0 | 8:46 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 10:18 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 51 | 7 | 7 | 14 | +10 | 70 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 51 | 13.7 | 10:23 |
| 2022-23 | NSH | 32 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -3 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 5.1 | 10:33 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 158 | 11 | 15 | 26 | -7 | 220 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 180 | 6.1 | 10:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
2 goals and 2 assists in 32 games — 4 points — at 10:33 a night, with 24 penalty minutes. Minus-3, 39 shots at 5.1 per cent.
47.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 33rd percentile, with his ice at 6-11 against an expectation of 11.06-12.42 across 297 minutes — five goals short at the offensive end, on 297 minutes, which means nothing.
The number that does mean something: he started 19.1 per cent of his five-on-five shifts in the attacking zone. Thirty attacking-zone draws against 127 defensive ones. That is close to the most extreme deployment in the league and it was given to a fourth-line centre on a club that finished twenty-fourth in chances.
Six seasons, 158 games, 26 points.
The Finesse Game
39 shots at a median of 23 feet, 44 per cent from inside twenty and 26 per cent from beyond forty.
Beyond forty: 12 shots on goal and no goals. Inside forty: 26 shots, 2 goals.
Eleven goals in 158 career games. There is no scoring here and Nashville is not asking for it — a man taking eight shifts in ten in his own end is not being asked to produce.
92.7 mph at the 64th percentile, on three slap shots.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 232 — level with Mikkola as the tallest skater in these five chapters, and fifty pounds heavier.
Top speed 20.9 mph, the 2nd percentile. Bursts 0.6 a game, the 28th; 1.68 miles a game, the 3rd.
A 6-6 centre at the 2nd percentile in top speed is a specific and increasingly rare kind of player, and the 19.1 per cent zone-start share is what a club does with one: put him on for a defensive draw, let him win it or tie up the man who did, and change.
He wins the wall, clears the front of his own net and fights, and at 232 pounds none of that is in question. Twenty-four penalty minutes in thirty-two games.
The Intangibles
Twenty-fifth overall in 2013 to Montreal out of London, three seasons there, two years out of the league, and 158 games at twenty-eight.
He took faceoffs in his own end and did very little else, and this book has no way to grade that beyond recording the assignment and the fact that Nashville kept giving it to him.
Four points is a fourth-line season. The 19.1 per cent is the reason it was.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“He took faceoffs in his own end and did very little else, and this book has no way to grade that beyond recording the assignment and the fact that Nashville kept giving it to him.”
“He wins the wall, clears the front of his own net and fights, and at 232 pounds none of that is in question.”
“He wins the wall, clears the front of his own net and fights, and at 232 pounds none of that is in question.”
“He wins the wall, clears the front of his own net and fights, and at 232 pounds none of that is in question.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 297 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.1%
- 33rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.7%
- 16th 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: 6 for, 11 against. Expected: 11.1 and 12.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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, 2022-23 · 32 games
- Top speed
- 20.9 mph
- 9th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.56 a game
- Distance
- 1.68 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.7 mph
- 82nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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
2022-23 · 297 minutes at five-on-five
- Cole Smith24%
- Rasmus Asplundoff the roster22%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- NSH took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.1% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 297 minutes at five-on-five — 6th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mark Jankowski | 49.3% | 44.9% | 44.4% |
| Ryan McDonagh | 56.1% | 41.5% | 44.2% |
| Dante Fabbro | 45.0% | 48.1% | 48.1% |
49.3% together, 44.9% for him apart and 44.4% for Jankowski 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
54 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.