This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Jensen
Ottawa Senators Defense
Five hundred and sixty-two games, nineteen goals, and no power-play goal in any of them.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 562 | 19 | 115 | 134 | +17 | 136 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 649 | 2.9 | 18:40 |
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.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.13 penalty minutes a game over 78, 2nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“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.”
“A fifth-round pick who has taken nineteen and twenty minutes a night for eight seasons in Detroit and Washington.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,298 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.1%
- 22nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.9%
- 17th 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: 44 for, 52 against. Expected: 44.6 and 54.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 — 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 89th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.85 a game
- Distance
- 2.93 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.7 mph
- 50th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 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
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rasmus Sandin | 42.6% | 46.2% | 48.2% |
| Alex Ovechkin | 44.6% | 45.3% | 47.1% |
| Aliaksei Protas | 47.9% | 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.