This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Cousins
Florida Panthers Center
The 13th-most penalties drawn of the 393 qualified forwards and the 5th-fewest sprints over 20 mph.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | PHI | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0.0 | 8:49 |
| 2015-16 | PHI | 36 | 6 | 5 | 11 | +5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 41 | 14.6 | 10:44 |
| 2016-17 | PHI | 60 | 6 | 10 | 16 | -6 | 31 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 99 | 6.1 | 12:00 |
| 2017-18 | ARI | 71 | 12 | 7 | 19 | -7 | 31 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 119 | 10.1 | 12:52 |
| 2018-19 | ARI | 81 | 7 | 20 | 27 | -8 | 35 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 144 | 4.9 | 13:33 |
| 2019-20 | MTL/VGK | 65 | 10 | 15 | 25 | 0 | 35 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 115 | 8.7 | 13:31 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 52 | 5 | 13 | 18 | +4 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 60 | 8.3 | 13:22 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 68 | 9 | 13 | 22 | -8 | 31 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 103 | 8.7 | 12:28 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 444 | 55 | 83 | 138 | -19 | 210 | 9 | 0 | 6 | 687 | 8.0 | 12:42 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
9 goals and 13 assists in 68 games for Nashville — 22 points and a minus-8 at 12:28 a night, the 18th percentile among forwards — with 31 penalty minutes.
50.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 862 minutes, the 54th percentile — an even share from a fourth line, which is the most a fourth line is asked for.
The Finesse Game
7.29 shots per 60 is the 50th percentile and nine goals on 103 shots is 8.7 per cent, the 26th. 53 per cent from the slot at a median of 24 feet — ordinary places, ordinary volume, poor conversion.
1.47 even-strength points per 60 is the 30th percentile, with 18 per cent of his points on the power play off 1:39 a night.
1.13 takeaways per 60 is the 16th percentile against 1.63 giveaways at the 55th. Neither number is doing anything.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 191.
1.77 penalties drawn per 60 is the 13th-most of the 393 qualified forwards, and 0.78 taken is the 65th percentile — a net of plus-0.99, the 98th. He is fouled almost twice an hour and fouls back once, which on a fourth line is the most valuable thing a man that size can do.
4.67 hits per 60 is the 59th percentile. The contact is ordinary and the penalties drawn are not, which is worth separating: he is not hitting people, he is being hit.
21.7 mph is the 12th percentile among forwards and 1.4 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 5th-fewest of 365, against 9.93 miles per 60 at the 76th. He covers a good deal of ground and almost never gets above twenty miles an hour — a slow, busy, irritating shift.
The Intangibles
Sixty-eighth overall in 2011, the third round, and 444 NHL games at 29 with 138 points and 210 penalty minutes across five organisations.
Eight seasons of eleven to thirty points at twelve or thirteen minutes. The record is a fourth-line agitator and it has been the same record for eight years.
Florida is the sixth club he has played for and the best by a distance. A man who draws penalties at the thirteenth-highest rate in the league is a specific thing to add to a team with the best power play it can build, and everything else on this page is fourth-line filler.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.
“He is fouled almost twice an hour and fouls back once”
“he is not hitting people, he is being hit”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 757 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.1%
- 57th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.3%
- 67th 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: 26 for, 31 against. Expected: 28.4 and 28.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 46 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 51 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, 2021-22 · 68 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 31st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.29 a game
- Distance
- 2.06 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.8 mph
- 85th 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 84.1
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
2021-22 with NSH · 757 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, 2021-22
- The club
- NSH took 49.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 757 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Josi | 46.4% | 52.9% | 52.4% |
| Philip Tomasino | 56.3% | 46.8% | 50.1% |
| Luke Kunin | 43.9% | 53.3% | 44.3% |
46.4% together, 52.9% for him apart and 52.4% for Josi apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
140 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.