This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Nicolas Aube-Kubel

A Stanley Cup, 183 penalty minutes in 282 games, and the fifth percentile of chances.

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	WSH	60	6	10	16	+4	23	0	0	0	58	10.3	12:12
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	282	31	47	78	+15	183	2	0	3	315	9.8	10:54

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

6 goals and 10 assists in 60 games for Washington — 16 points at 12:12 a night, plus-4, on 58 shots at 10.34 per cent, and 23 penalty minutes.

41.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 722 minutes, the 8th percentile. His ice went 26-21 against an expectation of 20.01-27.84 — eight goals scored above expectation against a chance share that says he spent the year in his own end.

The Finesse Game

58 attempts at a median of 33 feet, with 27 per cent from inside 20 and 31 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 10.34 per cent. Thirty-one goals in 282 NHL games.

10 assists. He does not create and he does not carry the puck — the whole of the offensive contribution is arriving first and putting it behind the defence.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 213 and heavy for the height. He finishes every check and he plays with an edge, and he is one of the few forwards this club has who an opponent notices.

183 penalty minutes in 282 games. He will fight and he takes liberties, and he is a fourth-line deterrent rather than a player.

The Intangibles

Forty-eighth overall in 2014 by Philadelphia, a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022, and 282 games across six seasons for four clubs.

He was signed here in the summer. A club whose top six is light and whose blue line does not punish anybody has added a fourth-line forward who does nothing else, and the fifth percentile of chances is the honest price of that.

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
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
30.6% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
13% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 1st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“**He finishes every check and he plays with an edge**, and he is one of the few forwards this club has who an opponent notices.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“**He finishes every check and he plays with an edge**, and he is one of the few forwards this club has who an opponent notices.”
takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He will fight and **he takes liberties**, and he is a fourth-line deterrent rather than a player.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He does not create and he does not carry the puck** — the whole of the offensive contribution is arriving first and putting it behind the defence.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**He does not create and he does not carry the puck** — the whole of the offensive contribution is arriving first and putting it behind the defence.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 722 minutes

Expected goals: 41.8%; 8th pct
Shot attempts: 43.4%; 10th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 21 against. Expected: 20.0 and 27.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

8th

The two rank him within 9 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 — 61 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 · 60 games

Top speed: 23.4 mph; 95th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.23 a game
Distance: 2.11 miles a game
Hardest shot: 92.6 mph; 84th 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with WSH · 722 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, 2023-24

The club: WSH took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.8% — 5.4 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 722 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Beck Malenstyn	40.5%	45.9%	37.7%
Nic Dowd	40.5%	44.1%	40.1%
John Carlson	41.3%	42.2%	48.9%

40.5% together, 45.9% for him apart and 37.7% for Malenstyn apart. He was better away from Malenstyn, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Malenstyn.

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

98 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 27% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.