Nick Jensen

Gives up shots and refuses to give up chances, which is a rarer skill than it sounds.

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

2016-17	DET	49	4	9	13	-7	12	0	0	0	59	6.8	17:45
2017-18	DET	81	0	15	15	-8	27	0	0	0	107	0.0	16:15
2018-19	DET/WSH	80	2	18	20	+4	21	0	0	0	94	2.1	19:51
2019-20	WSH	68	0	8	8	+1	13	0	0	0	61	0.0	17:49
2020-21	WSH	53	2	12	14	+5	14	0	0	0	60	3.3	17:18
2021-22	WSH	76	5	16	21	+32	21	0	0	1	88	5.7	19:21
2022-23	WSH	77	5	24	29	-1	18	0	0	0	109	4.6	20:37
2023-24	WSH	78	1	13	14	-9	10	0	0	0	71	1.4	19:38
2024-25	OTT	71	3	18	21	+18	6	0	0	0	77	3.9	20:13
2025-26	OTT	61	4	13	17	-2	22	0	0	0	36	11.1	17:01
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	694	26	146	172	+33	164	0	0	1	762	3.4	18:41

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

4 goals and 13 assists in 61 games, minus-2, at 17 minutes a night. His tenth NHL season and his 694th game. The 5-on-5 work was done in Ottawa before he came here.

The Finesse Game

There is almost none and he has built a decade-long career on that being fine. 36 shots in 61 games. He makes the first pass, he does not carry, and he has 26 goals in 694 games.

The Physical Game

6 foot even and 202, which is small for the job he does, so he does it with angles. He takes away the middle of the ice and lets you have the outside, and he is willing to block the shot that results.

The Intangibles

The interesting thing about his season is a split you do not see often. He was on for only 48.9 per cent of the shot attempts — 44th percentile, below average — but 52.5 per cent of the expected goals, which is 81st. The opposition had the puck plenty and could not do anything good with it.

That is the signature of a defenceman who concedes the perimeter deliberately. The goals bore it out: 50 for and 54 against while he was on the ice, the best margin of any defenceman covered in this club’s section.

He is 36 and a 150th pick who has outlasted almost everyone taken ahead of him. Anaheim needs exactly this, because nobody else on the blue line does it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 961 minutes

Expected goals: 52.5%; 74th pct
Shot attempts: 48.3%; 39th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 54 against. Expected: 41.4 and 37.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

11th

Numbers

74th

The numbers rank him 63 points above where the report does. 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 — 64 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 · 61 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 85th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.49 a game
Distance: 2.54 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.3 mph; 20th 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, 5 assists, 8 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with OTT · 961 minutes at five-on-five

Thomas Chabot60%
Nikolas Matinpalo23%

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: OTT took 54.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.5% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 961 minutes at five-on-five — 56th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Thomas Chabot	52.6%	52.4%	56.7%
Dylan Cozens	54.9%	51.4%	61.4%
Tim Stützle	51.4%	53.1%	55.3%

52.6% together, 52.4% for him apart and 56.7% for Chabot apart. Chabot was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

72 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.