Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

4

Nick Jensen

Ottawa Senators Defense

Five hundred and sixty-two games, nineteen goals, and no power-play goal in any of them.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17DET494913-712000596.817:45
2017-18DET8101515-8270001070.016:15
2018-19DET/WSH8021820+421000942.119:51
2019-20WSH68088+113000610.017:49
2020-21WSH5321214+514000603.317:18
2021-22WSH7651621+3221001885.719:21
2022-23WSH7752429-1180001094.620:37
2023-24WSH7811314-910000711.419:38
2024-25 so far
Career56219115134+171360016492.918:40

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

78 games for Washington, 1 goal and 13 assists for 14 points, 10 penalty minutes, 19:38 a night and minus-9. He took 45.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,298 minutes, the 22nd percentile, and his ice went 44-52 against an expectation of 44.57-54.33.

Level with the chances at his own end of it and two fewer conceded than they called for. A 22nd percentile chance share over thirteen hundred minutes is a defenceman being handed the hardest starts on a club that finished eighth in the East.

The Finesse Game

117 attempts at a median of 56 feet with 79 per cent of them from beyond forty and 10 per cent from inside twenty, 71 of those on goal, converted at 1.4 per cent against a career 2.93 across 649 shots.

A career 2.93 per cent across 649 shots, 19 goals in 562 games and not one power-play goal in eight seasons. He moves the puck to the first available forward and asks for nothing back; 115 career assists is the whole of the offensive record.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 202 and took 10 penalty minutes.

136 career penalty minutes in 562 games is one of the lowest rates of any regular defenceman in the league. He defends by position and by stick rather than by contact, kills plays before they need a hit, and almost never puts his club a man short doing it.

The Intangibles

150th overall in 2009 by Detroit, eight seasons, 134 points in 562 games and a career plus-17.

A fifth-round pick who has taken nineteen and twenty minutes a night for eight seasons in Detroit and Washington. Ottawa signed him at 34 to do exactly what he has always done, which is the second pair and the penalty kill and no headlines at all.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,298 minutes

Expected goals
45.1%
22nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
44.9%
17th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 52 against. Expected: 44.6 and 54.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
16th
Numbers
22nd

The two rank him within 6 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 437 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with WSH · 1298 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
WSH took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.1% — 2.1 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,298 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Rasmus Sandin42.6%46.2%48.2%
Alex Ovechkin44.6%45.3%47.1%
Aliaksei Protas47.9%43.9%52.4%

42.6% together, 46.2% for him apart and 48.2% for Sandin 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

117 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.