This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Washington Capitals Right Wing
The fourth percentile of zone starts, and two goals from thirty-one slot shots.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | PHI | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 5:35 |
| 2019-20 | PHI | 36 | 7 | 8 | 15 | +1 | 19 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 48 | 14.6 | 11:17 |
| 2020-21 | PHI | 50 | 3 | 9 | 12 | -3 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 53 | 5.7 | 11:10 |
| 2021-22 | PHI/COL | 74 | 11 | 12 | 23 | +11 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 87 | 12.6 | 9:49 |
| 2022-23 | TOR/WSH | 53 | 4 | 8 | 12 | +1 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 | 6.0 | 11:22 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 222 | 25 | 37 | 62 | +11 | 160 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 257 | 9.7 | 10:33 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
4 goals and 8 assists in 53 games — 12 points — at 11:22 a night. Plus-1, 67 shots at 6.0 per cent, 50 penalty minutes.
52.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 591 minutes, the 69th percentile, with his ice at 21-20 against an expectation of 24.56-21.93 — four fewer goals scored than the chances called for.
He started 31.7 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 4th percentile: 108 attacking draws against 233 defensive ones.
A 69th-percentile chance share out of the fourth percentile of starts is a very good fourth-line season, and twelve points is what it looks like from the outside.
The Finesse Game
67 shots at a median of 28 feet, with 30 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 15 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside twenty feet: 31 shots on goal and two goals — 6.45 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 20 shots and two goals, 10.00 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 15 shots and none.
Two goals from thirty-one shots in the slot is a third of the league rate, and a career 9.7 per cent across 222 games says he is a below-average finisher rather than an unlucky one.
102 tracked attempts, 51 of them wrist shots and three slap. 91.0 mph at the 50th percentile.
25 goals in 222 career games. The offence is not the point and never has been.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 213 pounds, with 50 penalty minutes in 53 games and 160 in 222 career games.
A top speed of 23.2 mph at the 91st percentile and 2.5 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 93rd, on 1.93 miles a game at the 13th, which is eleven minutes of ice time.
That is a genuinely fast fourth-line forward and the burst count is the tool the job needs.
He forechecks at full speed and finishes his checks, and the 50 penalty minutes in eleven minutes a night are what that costs.
He is punishing for a man of six foot, and the fourth-percentile deployment is the club saying it trusts him to be first on a puck in his own end.
The Intangibles
Forty-eighth overall in 2014, the second round, five seasons, 222 games, 62 points across Philadelphia, Colorado, Toronto and Washington, and a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022.
25 goals and 37 assists, and a plus-11.
He is twenty-seven, on his fourth club in three seasons.
A second-round pick who becomes a Stanley Cup fourth-liner and is on a fourth club within a year is the ordinary shape of this job, and the 69th-percentile chance share out of the fourth percentile of starts says the hockey has been better than the movement suggests.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
32% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He forechecks at full speed and finishes his checks, and the 50 penalty minutes in eleven minutes a night are what that costs.”
“He is punishing for a man of six foot, and the fourth-percentile deployment is the club saying it trusts him to be first on a puck in his own end.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 591 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.8%
- 73rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.9%
- 70th 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: 21 for, 20 against. Expected: 24.6 and 21.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2022-23 · 53 games
- Top speed
- 23.2 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.55 a game
- Distance
- 1.93 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.0 mph
- 72nd 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 538 minutes at five-on-five
- Nic Dowd37%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- WSH took 49.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.8% — 3.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 591 minutes at five-on-five — 22nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lars Eller | 59.1% | 49.4% | 50.5% |
| Nic Dowd | 52.8% | 52.8% | 50.8% |
| Nick Jensen | 50.9% | 53.8% | 49.9% |
59.1% together, 49.4% for him apart and 50.5% for Eller 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
100 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.