This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nico Hischier
New Jersey Devils Center
Sixty points in seventy games at 19:21 with 1:43 a night on the kill, and 50.2 per cent of the chances away from Jesper Bratt.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 300 | 78 | 128 | 206 | -16 | 83 | 13 | 2 | 8 | 660 | 11.8 | 17:56 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
21 goals and 39 assists in seventy games at 19:21 a night — the 91st percentile among forwards — minus-1, seventeen penalty minutes. First overall in 2017, five seasons, 300 games, 206 points, at 23.
Sixty points in seventy games is a career high by eight.
The Finesse Game
2.66 even-strength points per 60 is the 86th percentile and only twenty per cent of his points came on the power play. 6.78 shots per 60 is the 41st at 13.7 per cent — modest volume, good conversion, from a 24-foot median with 52 per cent from the slot.
96.3 mph is the 91st percentile, a genuinely hard shot he does not use often.
54.6 per cent of the expected goals is the 82nd percentile. His ice went 47-39 against an expectation of 46.23-38.49 — almost exactly what the model asked, which on this club is rare.
With Jesper Bratt across 720 attempts he took 59.9 per cent of the chances; without him, 50.2. Bratt away from Hischier read 54.9. That gap is the caution on an otherwise excellent season.
1.99 takeaways per 60 is the 75th percentile.
The Physical Game
2.22 hits per 60 is the 24th percentile and 2.13 blocks the 73rd. He killed 1:43 a night, the 80th percentile among forwards, while also taking 2:49 on the power play.
0.31 penalties taken per 60 is the 11th percentile and seventeen penalty minutes came out of seventy games.
The Intangibles
23.1 mph is the 84th percentile and 9.03 miles per 60 is the 9th. He is quick and covers less ground than almost any forward in the league — the reverse of Hughes beside him, and a genuinely unusual pairing of readings.
He is 23, a first-overall pick, a two-way centre carrying nineteen minutes and both special teams on a club that finished 28th. The record here is good and undersold, and the one number that qualifies it is the Bratt split.
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.
- 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.
“He killed 1:43 a night, the 80th percentile among forwards, while also taking 2:49 on the power play.”
“0.31 penalties taken per 60 is the 11th percentile and seventeen penalty minutes came out of seventy games.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 992 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.6%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.4%
- 68th 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: 47 for, 39 against. Expected: 46.2 and 38.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2021-22 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 90th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.13 a game
- Distance
- 2.91 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.3 mph
- 94th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 992 minutes at five-on-five
- Jesper Bratt39%
- Tomas Tatar30%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- NJD took 51.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.6% — 3.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 992 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pavel Zacha | 56.8% | 52.4% | 52.9% |
| Jesper Bratt | 59.9% | 50.2% | 54.9% |
| Damon Severson | 55.7% | 53.8% | 50.3% |
56.8% together, 52.4% for him apart and 52.9% for Zacha apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
213 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 13% from beyond forty.