Nico Hischier

48 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and a Selke case nobody makes.

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

2017-18	NJD	82	20	32	52	+10	26	1	0	2	180	11.1	16:19
2018-19	NJD	69	17	30	47	0	24	3	0	3	160	10.6	18:06
2019-20	NJD	58	14	22	36	-16	12	2	1	1	123	11.4	18:04
2020-21	NJD	21	6	5	11	-9	4	3	1	0	44	13.6	18:31
2021-22	NJD	70	21	39	60	-1	17	4	0	2	153	13.7	19:21
2022-23	NJD	81	31	49	80	+33	10	7	3	9	256	12.1	19:17
2023-24	NJD	71	27	40	67	-5	12	6	1	4	182	14.8	19:29
2024-25	NJD	75	35	34	69	+9	20	14	0	3	187	18.7	20:23
2025-26	NJD	82	28	38	66	-6	29	11	0	6	211	13.3	20:43
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	609	199	289	488	+15	154	51	6	30	1496	13.3	18:58

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

28 goals and 38 assists in all 82 games — 66 points, minus-6, at 20:43 a night with 11 power-play goals.

The Finesse Game

The shot selection is the best of the club’s top 6. 48 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside 20 feet with a median of 20, and 28 goals came out of it.

He is not the fastest man on his own line and it does not matter, because the reads are early enough that he arrives with the puck rather than chasing it. 38 assists in a role that also takes every hard defensive shift is a genuinely high return.

The Physical Game

6-1, 200, and he plays a properly hard two-way game — 29 penalty minutes across 82 games of the toughest assignment on the roster, which is exceptional discipline.

He wins faceoffs, kills penalties, and is the man sent out to protect a lead.

The Intangibles

53.5 per cent of the expected goals, 80th percentile, with the chances 57.4 to 49.9 in his favour and the goals 37-49 against.

A 16-goal hole, again, on a club that under-finished by 32.

13 points in his last 10. He is 27, the first pick in 2017, the captain, and 488 points into 609 games. The 1st overall pick that year was supposed to be the safe one rather than the spectacular one, and that is exactly what he has been.

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

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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:08 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,241 minutes

Expected goals: 53.5%; 80th pct
Shot attempts: 53.7%; 85th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 49 against. Expected: 57.4 and 49.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

98th

Numbers

80th

The two rank him within 18 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 84 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 78th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.33 a game
Distance: 3.07 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 80th 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 — 4 goals, 9 assists, 28 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1241 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, 2025-26

The club: NJD took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.5% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,241 minutes at five-on-five — 85th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Timo Meier	54.4%	52.0%	50.1%
Dawson Mercer	55.0%	51.9%	48.3%
Luke Hughes	54.6%	52.9%	48.4%

54.4% together, 52.0% for him apart and 50.1% for Meier apart. Meier was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Meier 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

299 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.