This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Nathan Bastian
New Jersey Devils Right Wing
A median shot distance of thirteen feet, the shortest on the club, from the 10th percentile of zone starts.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | NJD | 7 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 23.1 | 12:41 |
| 2020-21 | NJD | 41 | 3 | 7 | 10 | 0 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 6.5 | 12:37 |
| 2021-22 | SEA/NJD | 72 | 12 | 6 | 18 | -12 | 65 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 97 | 12.4 | 11:54 |
| 2022-23 | NJD | 43 | 6 | 9 | 15 | +7 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 62 | 9.7 | 12:26 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 163 | 24 | 22 | 46 | -5 | 127 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 218 | 11.0 | 12:15 |
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
6 goals and 9 assists in 43 games — 15 points — at 12:26 a night. Plus-7, 62 shots at 9.7 per cent, 31 penalty minutes.
54.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 83rd percentile, with his ice at 16-11 against an expectation of 20.08-16.92 across 437 minutes.
He started 38.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 10th percentile: 111 attacking draws against 179. An 83rd-percentile chance share out of the 10th percentile of deployment is the most impressive line in this part of the roster.
Four seasons, 163 games, 46 points.
The Finesse Game
62 shots at a median of 13 feet — the shortest on this club by nine feet — with 64 per cent of them from inside twenty.
Inside twenty: 37 shots on goal and 6 goals, 16.22 per cent, a shade under the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 18 shots, none. Beyond forty: six shots all season.
Every goal he scores comes from within twenty feet, and he gets there by standing in it. 18 tip-ins and 14 backhands out of 89 tracked attempts, against three slap shots.
That is a net-front forward’s chart and nothing else, and at 6-4 and 217 it is the right one for him. Nine assists is what it is: he is not the man the play goes through.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 217, with 31 penalty minutes in forty-three games.
Top speed 21.6 mph, the 17th percentile; 0.5 bursts a game, the 27th; 1.91 miles a game, the 11th. Bottom quarter of the league in all three, in twelve minutes a night.
He forechecks by arriving heavy rather than early, finishes his checks, and holds the puck along the wall until somebody comes to take it off him.
That is the fourth-line right wing’s job description, and the share of the chances he came back with out of the club’s third-hardest starts says he does it.
The Intangibles
Forty-first overall in 2016, a 2021-22 season split between Seattle and New Jersey after the expansion draft took him, and 163 games across four years.
He has 24 goals and 22 assists in his career and 127 penalty minutes, which is an accurate summary of the role.
He is twenty-five and there is no reason the fourth-line job should not be his for several years. The measurements say the ceiling is exactly where he is standing.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
71.3% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“Every goal he scores comes from within twenty feet, and he gets there by standing in it.”
“He forechecks by arriving heavy rather than early, finishes his checks, and holds the puck along the wall until somebody comes to take it off him.”
“Top speed 21.6 mph, the 17th percentile; 0.5 bursts a game, the 27th; 1.91 miles a game, the 11th. Bottom quarter of the league in all three, in twelve minutes a night.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 437 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.3%
- 83rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51%
- 61st 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: 16 for, 11 against. Expected: 20.1 and 16.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 49 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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 · 43 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 27th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.53 a game
- Distance
- 1.91 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.2 mph
- 56th 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 · 437 minutes at five-on-five
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
- NJD took 56.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.3% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 437 minutes at five-on-five — 12th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael McLeod | 55.3% | 49.8% | 48.9% |
| Miles Wood | 50.7% | 64.6% | 50.0% |
| Damon Severson | 58.2% | 51.8% | 59.9% |
55.3% together, 49.8% for him apart and 48.9% for McLeod 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
87 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 64% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.