Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0

Morgan Barron

A 6-4 Cornell graduate who kills penalties and has quietly become a fixture on the fourth line.

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

2020-21	NYR	5	1	0	1	-1	2	0	0	0	3	33.3	13:41
2021-22	NYR/WPG	27	2	3	5	-4	8	0	0	0	33	6.1	9:48
2022-23	WPG	70	8	13	21	+4	31	0	1	2	112	7.1	13:15
2023-24	WPG	80	11	7	18	+10	23	0	0	3	94	11.7	10:30
2024-25	WPG	74	8	7	15	+8	16	0	2	0	92	8.7	10:23
2025-26	WPG	65	11	12	23	+5	31	0	2	2	93	11.8	12:48
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	321	41	42	83	+22	111	0	5	7	427	9.6	11:32

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

11 goals and 23 points in 65 games, plus-5, on under 13 minutes a night. Both the goals and the points are career highs, and the plus-5 in a checking role is the number that matters.

The Finesse Game

Limited and improving. 41 goals in 321 career games. He scores from close range, mostly on the forecheck and off rebounds, and does not create anything for himself with the puck.

93 shots in 65 games at 13 minutes a night is actually an aggressive rate, which is the most encouraging thing in his file.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 220, and he uses it. He forechecks hard, wins pucks on the wall, blocks shots, and takes the punishment that comes with playing in front of the net on the penalty kill.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick out of a college programme that produces few NHL players, and he has now played more than 300 games. That is not an accident.

At 27 he is what he is: a fourth-line centre who can move to wing, kills penalties well, and gives a coach no reason to think about him. The 11 goals are a bonus rather than a trend.

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

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-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
28% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 695 minutes

Expected goals: 46.6%; 25th pct
Shot attempts: 47.6%; 32nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 22 against. Expected: 25.5 and 29.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

67th

Numbers

25th

The report ranks him 42 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 65 games

Top speed: 23.6 mph; 97th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.51 a game
Distance: 2.04 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.6 mph; 97th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 2 assists, 13 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 695 minutes at five-on-five

Cole Koepke40%
Tanner Pearsonoff the roster38%
Adam Lowry23%

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, 2025-26

The club: WPG took 47.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 695 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cole Koepke	42.6%	49.5%	44.4%
Tanner Pearson	47.9%	45.7%	44.5%
Dylan DeMelo	48.4%	45.3%	51.1%

42.6% together, 49.5% for him apart and 44.4% for Koepke apart. He was better away from Koepke, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Koepke.

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

135 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.