This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nico Hischier
New Jersey Devils Center
35 goals on an 18.7 per cent rate with 52 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, and 14 on the power play.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 527 | 171 | 251 | 422 | +21 | 125 | 40 | 6 | 24 | 1285 | 13.3 | 18:42 |
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
35 goals and 34 assists in 75 games for 69 points, plus-9, on 20:23 a night with 14 on the power play and 187 shots.
53.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 83rd percentile, with on-ice goals of 45-31 against an expected 47.0-40.3. 52 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 19, and only 10 per cent from beyond 40 — the reason an 18.7 per cent rate is more believable from him than from most.
The Finesse Game
A complete two-way centre whose offensive game is built entirely on going to the right place. He does not shoot from distance and does not need to; the release in tight is quick and the hands work in traffic.
34 assists is a fair total and he is a facilitator rather than a creator. What separates him is that he does all of it while taking the hardest defensive assignment on the roster.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 200, and he plays a genuinely hard game. He wins pucks below the goal line, goes to the net front, and takes the defensive-zone draws against the best centres in the league.
20 penalty minutes over 75 games at 20 minutes a night is excellent discipline. The durability has been good — five consecutive seasons above 70 games.
The Intangibles
The 1st overall pick in 2017, the captain since 22, and a career of being the most complete player on his club and the third-most discussed.
At 26 the projection is 70 points and Selke consideration every year. With Jack Hughes’s availability what it is, he is the player this club can actually plan around.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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
64.3% of his attempts in the slot, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“What separates him is that he does all of it while taking the hardest defensive assignment on the roster.”
“He wins pucks below the goal line, goes to the net front, and takes the defensive-zone draws against the best centres in the league.”
“He wins pucks below the goal line”
“takes the defensive-zone draws against the best centres in the league”
“the captain since 22, and a career of being the most complete player on his club and the third-most discussed.”
“34 assists is a fair total and he is a facilitator rather than a creator.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,029 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.8%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.1%
- 88th 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: 45 for, 31 against. Expected: 47.0 and 40.3.
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 637 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, 2024-25 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 58th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.00 a game
- Distance
- 3.06 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.2 mph
- 45th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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 · 1029 minutes at five-on-five
- Timo Meier70%
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
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,029 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timo Meier | 54.3% | 52.3% | 54.1% |
| Stefan Noesen | 55.8% | 52.2% | 50.5% |
| Johnathan Kovacevic | 50.1% | 55.9% | 53.1% |
54.3% together, 52.3% for him apart and 54.1% for Meier apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
263 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 35 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.