This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Jensen
Ottawa Senators Defense
Plus-18 at 20:13 a night, and his ice conceded eleven fewer goals than the chances said it should have.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 633 | 22 | 133 | 155 | +35 | 142 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 726 | 3.0 | 18:51 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
3 goals and 18 assists in 71 games — 21 points at 20:13 a night, plus-18, on 6 penalty minutes, which is the lowest total of anybody in this chapter who played more than 50 games.
50.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 63rd percentile. His ice went 53-45 against an expectation of 48.54-47.28 — eleven fewer goals against than the chances predicted, which is the largest defensive surplus on the roster.
The Finesse Game
77 attempts in 71 games at a median of 53 feet with 73 per cent from beyond 40. He does not shoot and he does not pretend to; 3 goals is a career-typical number.
The value is the first pass, which is quick, short and almost never wrong. 18 assists is what a defensive defenceman produces when the breakout works.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 202 and he defends by position rather than by force. He closes the gap early, takes the puck with his stick, and steers the play to the wall.
6 penalty minutes in 71 games at twenty minutes a night is close to unheard of. He is essentially never beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he is a first-unit penalty killer for exactly that reason.
The Intangibles
A fifth-round pick in 2009 who did not become a regular until he was 26, and is now 633 games and 155 points into it across three organisations.
He turned 35 in the autumn and played the best defensive season of his career. Ottawa acquired him from Washington in 2024 and paired him with Chabot, and the pair was a large part of why the club finished 6th in the league at suppressing chances.
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
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 71, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He closes the gap early, takes the puck with his stick, and steers the play to the wall.”
“He is essentially never beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he is a first-unit penalty killer for exactly that reason.”
“He is essentially never beaten badly enough to need to foul, and he is a first-unit penalty killer for exactly that reason.”
“6-0 and 202 and he defends by position rather than by force.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,208 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.7%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.1%
- 65th 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: 53 for, 45 against. Expected: 48.5 and 47.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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, 2024-25 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 78th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.61 a game
- Distance
- 3.07 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.3 mph
- 65th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1208 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyler Kleven10%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- OTT took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.7% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,208 minutes at five-on-five — 85th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Chabot | 51.2% | 48.4% | 55.5% |
| Tim Stützle | 56.9% | 47.5% | 52.2% |
| Drake Batherson | 49.8% | 51.0% | 49.2% |
51.2% together, 48.4% for him apart and 55.5% 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
121 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.