This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nico Hischier
New Jersey Devils Center
A first-overall centre who takes 56 per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet and kills penalties.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 452 | 136 | 217 | 353 | +12 | 105 | 26 | 6 | 21 | 1098 | 12.4 | 18:25 |
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
71 games, 27 goals and 40 assists for 67 points, 6 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 12 penalty minutes, 19:29 a night and minus-5. He took 53.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 980 minutes, the 79th percentile, and his ice went 55-49 against an expectation of 50.64-44.09.
Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and five more conceded than they called for. Sixty-seven points on the hard matchup, and a minus-5 that belongs to the crease.
The Finesse Game
182 shots at a median of 17 feet with 56 per cent of them from inside 20, converted at 14.8 per cent against a career 12.39.
217 career assists in 452 games. That shot median is the shortest of any top-six forward on this roster and it is the whole difference between him and Jack Hughes — one takes the puck to the middle and shoots, the other takes it wide and passes.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 200 and holds the puck below the goal line without needing to hit anybody.
12 penalty minutes in 71 games at nineteen and a half a night is a remarkable rate for a centre with this assignment. He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and has 6 career shorthanded goals.
The Intangibles
First overall in 2017 out of Naters, seven seasons, 452 games and 353 points, all of it for one organisation, and the captaincy since 2021.
He is 25 and is the second-best forward on his own club, which is the reason nobody outside New Jersey talks about him. A two-way first-line centre who plays every situation is worth more than the point total.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
66.5% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.17 penalty minutes a game over 71, 10th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“That shot median is the shortest of any top-six forward on this roster and it is the whole difference between him and Jack Hughes — one takes the puck to the middle and shoots, the other takes it wide and passes.”
“He is 6-1 and 200 and holds the puck below the goal line without needing to hit anybody.”
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and has 6 career shorthanded goals.”
“He takes the defensive-zone draw, kills penalties, and has 6 career shorthanded goals.”
“12 penalty minutes in 71 games at nineteen and a half a night is a remarkable rate for a centre with this assignment.”
“First overall in 2017 out of Naters, seven seasons, 452 games and 353 points, all of it for one organisation, and the captaincy since 2021.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 980 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.5%
- 80th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.6%
- 82nd 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: 55 for, 49 against. Expected: 50.6 and 44.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 — 80 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.07 a game
- Distance
- 2.92 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.2 mph
- 58th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 · 980 minutes at five-on-five
- Jesper Bratt63%
- Ondrej Palat41%
- Timo Meier32%
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
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.5% — 2.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 980 minutes at five-on-five — 55th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jesper Bratt | 57.1% | 46.7% | 55.9% |
| Ondrej Palat | 58.7% | 49.6% | 51.7% |
| John Marino | 53.2% | 53.6% | 47.6% |
57.1% together, 46.7% for him apart and 55.9% for Bratt apart. He was worse away from Bratt, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Bratt did.
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
257 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.