This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Michael McCarron
Nashville Predators Center
Six foot six, 102 penalty minutes, and a plus-3 at five-on-five sitting underneath a minus-21 — the clearest illustration in this edition of what plus-minus actually measures.
| 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 | NSH | 70 | 12 | 10 | 22 | +4 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 94 | 12.8 | 12:46 |
| 2024-25 | NSH | 74 | 5 | 9 | 14 | -21 | 102 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 80 | 6.3 | 13:45 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 302 | 28 | 34 | 62 | -24 | 422 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 354 | 7.9 | 11:43 |
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
74 games, 5 goals and 9 assists for 14 points at 13:45 a night, on 80 shots at 6.25 per cent. 102 penalty minutes, the most on the club. Minus-21.
At five-on-five his line was 39-36 to the good — genuinely outscoring opponents, and doing it against an expectation of 28.37-31.09, meaning both ends broke his way. The minus-21 is what happens to a fourth-line centre who kills penalties on a club that spent 4:51 a game shorthanded and finished 30th in the league. The two numbers describe different things, and only one of them describes him.
The Finesse Game
There is not a great deal of one. 40 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet because that is the only place he can score from, and 6.25 per cent on 80 attempts is a heavy release without accuracy behind it. The hands work at walking pace and not above it.
The skating is the career-long limitation. He is not slow for 232 pounds, which is a different thing from being fast, and it is the reason a fourth line is the ceiling.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 232 pounds, and among the two or three most physically imposing forwards in the league. He finishes every check available to him, clears a net front by relocating the man standing in it, and fights when it is asked for.
102 penalty minutes is the cost, and a substantial part of it is the point.
The Intangibles
The 25th pick in 2013, six seasons of American League hockey, and an NHL job arrived at in his late twenties that he has now held for four years. Almost nobody with that path arrives at all.
He is a fourth-line centre who kills penalties and wins draws, and he is exactly what he appears to be — which on a roster of expensive men playing below themselves counted for something.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 794 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.7%
- 29th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.1%
- 43rd 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: 39 for, 36 against. Expected: 28.4 and 31.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 26 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 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 794 minutes at five-on-five
- Cole Smith55%
- Colton Sissonsnow VGK38%
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 47.7% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 794 minutes at five-on-five — 35th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Smith | 47.7% | 47.8% | 49.5% |
| Colton Sissons | 49.3% | 46.8% | 47.6% |
| Brady Skjei | 41.0% | 52.0% | 48.4% |
47.7% together, 47.8% for him apart and 49.5% for Smith 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
116 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 6 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.