Nathan Bastian

A 6-4 fourth-line winger with 10 points and 31 penalty minutes, signed to make a fourth line heavier.

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	NJD	54	5	7	12	-10	32	0	0	1	57	8.8	10:10
2024-25	NJD	59	4	6	10	-4	31	1	1	1	44	9.1	10:56
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	276	33	35	68	-19	190	4	1	4	319	10.3	11:34

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

4 goals and 6 assists in 59 games for 10 points, minus-4, on 10:56 a night with New Jersey, with a shorthanded goal.

The smallest role on an NHL roster, and the numbers are what that produces. 44 shots, 4 goals, and nothing in the box score that argues for more ice time.

The Finesse Game

Limited and honest about it. The hands are functional at speed and nothing more, and he has never scored more than 8 goals in a season.

What he does is get the puck in deep and go and get it, which is a real fourth-line skill. He is a better forechecker than his skating suggests because he takes the direct line and arrives with weight.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 217, and the job description. He hits, he fights when the game asks for it, and he is genuinely difficult for a defenceman to handle below the goal line.

31 penalty minutes in 59 games. Most of it is the cost of playing this way; some of it is not, and a fourth-liner who takes a bad penalty is worth less than one who does not.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick who became a fourth-liner, spent his whole career in one organisation, and has never given any indication of being difficult about it.

Dallas is buying size for a fourth line that had none and a penalty killer for a unit that finished 17th. That is a sensible thing to buy for the money. It is not a thing that decides a season.

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.

forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He is a better forechecker than his skating suggests because he takes the direct line and arrives with weight.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits, he fights when the game asks for it”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“he is genuinely difficult for a defenceman to handle below the goal line”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“Dallas is buying size for a fourth line that had none and a penalty killer for a unit that finished 17th.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 563 minutes

Expected goals: 44.4%; 14th pct
Shot attempts: 47.6%; 30th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 10 for, 16 against. Expected: 14.7 and 18.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

30th

Numbers

14th

The 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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 · 59 games

Top speed: 21.6 mph; 23rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.75 a game
Distance: 1.74 miles a game
Hardest shot: 81.8 mph; 27th 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with NJD · 563 minutes at five-on-five

Curtis Lazarnow EDM62%
Tomas Tataroff the roster43%
Paul Cotter27%

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: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.4% — 6.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 563 minutes at five-on-five — 20th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Curtis Lazar	40.8%	49.8%	32.9%
Tomas Tatar	50.1%	40.6%	48.5%
Brenden Dillon	43.6%	44.8%	50.5%

40.8% together, 49.8% for him apart and 32.9% for Lazar apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Lazar behind.

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

59 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 6 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.