This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Nathan MacKinnon

One hundred and forty points and 405 shots — more than any player in this edition took — and his own ice still finished fourteen goals under expectation.

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

2013-14	COL	82	24	39	63	+20	26	8	0	5	241	10.0	17:21
2014-15	COL	64	14	24	38	-7	34	3	0	2	192	7.3	17:03
2015-16	COL	72	21	31	52	-4	20	7	0	6	245	8.6	18:52
2016-17	COL	82	16	37	53	-14	16	2	2	4	251	6.4	19:57
2017-18	COL	74	39	58	97	+11	55	12	0	12	284	13.7	19:54
2018-19	COL	82	41	58	99	+20	34	12	0	6	365	11.2	22:05
2019-20	COL	69	35	58	93	+13	12	12	0	4	318	11.0	21:13
2020-21	COL	48	20	45	65	+22	37	8	0	2	206	9.7	20:22
2021-22	COL	65	32	56	88	+22	42	7	0	5	299	10.7	21:04
2022-23	COL	71	42	69	111	+29	30	12	0	9	366	11.5	22:19
2023-24	COL	82	51	89	140	+35	42	10	0	9	405	12.6	22:49
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	791	335	564	899	+147	348	93	2	64	3172	10.6	20:18

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

All 82 games, 51 goals and 89 assists for 140 points, 10 on the power play, 22:49 a night and plus-35. He took 405 shots — more than any player in this edition — and converted 12.59 per cent. Only Nikita Kucherov scored more points.

He took 58.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,412 minutes, the 96th percentile, and his ice went 100-66 against an expectation of 75.93-54.93. Fourteen goals of scoring went missing at five-on-five behind the second-highest scorer in the league, which is a statement about the shooting around him rather than about him, and it is the strangest number in a chapter about the club that scored 304 goals.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the foundation and always has been. He arrives at the offensive blue line at a speed that forces a defenceman to turn, and everything else in his game follows from that single fact — the shot is dangerous because the defenceman is retreating, the pass is open because the defenceman is retreating.

Four hundred and five shots from a median of 31 feet with 24 per cent from inside 20. The release is heavy and quick off the rush and 51 goals is the fifth time he has cleared thirty-five.

He had 89 assists in 82 games and has 564 in 791 across his career, and the passing has quietly become the better half of a player known for a shot. He holds the puck a beat longer than a defenceman can afford and moves it late.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 200 and he goes through people rather than around them when the shift requires it. Forty-two penalty minutes in 82 games is a moderate rate for a first-line centre playing 22:49.

He forechecks hard and arrives on the first defenceman himself rather than sending a winger, which for a player of this value is a choice about how the game should be played. It is also why the chance share is in the 95th percentile.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2013 out of Halifax, eleven seasons, 899 points in 791 games and a Stanley Cup. He has played all 82 games twice in three years at 22:49 a night.

He is 29. The best of him is happening now, on a club whose crease is 24th in the league, and there is a version of this chapter written in five years that is about what that cost him.

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

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
58.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.6% for his club in the minutes he sat: +9.4, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
17:13 a game at five-on-five, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
66% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He arrives at the offensive blue line at a speed that forces a defenceman to turn, and everything else in his game follows from that single fact — the shot is dangerous because the defenceman is retreating, the pass is open because the defenceman is retreating.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He had 89 assists in 82 games and has 564 in 791 across his career, and the passing has quietly become the better half of a player known for a shot.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard and arrives on the first defenceman himself rather than sending a winger, which for a player of this value is a choice about how the game should be played.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,412 minutes

Expected goals: 58%; 96th pct
Shot attempts: 56.5%; 94th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 100 for, 66 against. Expected: 75.9 and 54.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

99th

Numbers

96th

The two rank him within 3 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 85 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 24.1 mph; 100th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 8.70 a game
Distance: 3.66 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.8 mph; 63rd 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

2023-24 · 1412 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, 2023-24

The club: COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.0% — 5.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,412 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mikko Rantanen	58.2%	57.2%	41.3%
Cale Makar	56.9%	59.9%	47.6%
Devon Toews	58.4%	57.5%	48.2%

58.2% together, 57.2% for him apart and 41.3% for Rantanen apart. Rantanen was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Rantanen than for him.

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

521 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 50 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.