This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Nicolas Deslauriers

One hundred and thirty-six penalty minutes, second in the league, and 1.68 miles a game.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2013-14	BUF	17	1	0	1	-10	18	0	0	0	30	3.3	13:09
2014-15	BUF	82	5	10	15	-24	71	0	0	1	76	6.6	11:52
2015-16	BUF	70	6	6	12	-14	59	0	0	1	72	8.3	10:20
2016-17	BUF	42	0	2	2	-6	38	0	0	0	26	0.0	7:25
2017-18	MTL	58	10	4	14	+7	55	0	0	1	77	13.0	11:36
2018-19	MTL	48	2	3	5	-12	22	0	1	0	48	4.2	10:02
2019-20	ANA	59	7	6	13	-1	92	0	0	1	64	10.9	9:47
2020-21	ANA	49	5	5	10	-7	53	0	0	2	65	7.7	11:19
2021-22	ANA/MIN	81	8	5	13	-11	113	0	1	1	90	8.9	11:22
2022-23	PHI	80	6	6	12	-11	136	0	1	0	70	8.6	10:06
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	586	50	47	97	-89	657	0	3	7	618	8.1	10:40

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

6 goals and 6 assists in 80 games — 12 points — at 10:06 a night. Minus-11, 70 shots at 8.6 per cent, one shorthanded goal, and 136 penalty minutes, the second-most in the league behind Patrick Maroon’s 150.

44.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 16th percentile, with his ice at 18-31 against an expectation of 22.65-28.71 across 750 minutes — five goals short at the attacking end and two past at the defensive.

He started 51.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 51st percentile — exactly neutral deployment, and the 16th-percentile chance share out of it is his own.

Ten seasons, 586 games, 97 points, 657 penalty minutes, and a career minus-89.

The Finesse Game

70 shots at a median of 27 feet, and six goals.

Inside twenty: 23 shots on goal and 4 goals, 17.39 per cent, which is the league forward rate. From twenty to forty: 22 shots and 2 goals. Beyond forty: 21 shots and none.

Six goals on sixty-six shots on goal, and 50 in 586 career games. The finishing from close is ordinary and there is nothing else.

61 wrist shots out of 107 tracked attempts, with 15 tip-ins and seven slap. 90.7 mph at the 48th percentile.

Six assists in eighty games. The offensive file is empty and it is not what anybody is paying for.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 218, and this is the entire report.

136 penalty minutes last season and 657 in his career. Top speed 21.1 mph, the 6th percentile; 0.3 bursts a game, the 8th; 1.68 miles a game, the 3rd percentile.

Bottom tenth of the league in every measure of skating, in ten minutes a night. He is not fast, does not cover ground, and neither has ever been the point.

He hits everything within reach, fights anybody, and is one of the last players in the league employed substantially for it.

What it costs is the 16th-percentile chance share from neutral zone starts, which is a real number and is not explained by the deployment. On a club whose penalty kill finished twenty-seventh, 136 penalty minutes is a second cost on top of it.

The Intangibles

Eighty-fourth overall in 2009 to Los Angeles, and ten seasons across Buffalo, Montreal, Anaheim, Minnesota and here.

50 goals and 47 assists in 586 games, and a career minus-89.

He is thirty-two, and the role he plays is one the league has spent a decade deciding it can do without. The measurements in this book agree with the league, and this file will say so without pretending it settles what a room is worth.

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.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits everything within reach, fights anybody, and is one of the last players in the league employed substantially for it.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“136 penalty minutes last season and 657 in his career.”
edgeshe lacks it· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“Bottom tenth of the league in every measure of skating, in ten minutes a night.”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“What it costs is the 16th-percentile chance share from neutral zone starts, which is a real number and is not explained by the deployment.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 750 minutes

Expected goals: 44.1%; 15th pct
Shot attempts: 44.7%; 16th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 18 for, 31 against. Expected: 22.6 and 28.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

15th

Numbers

15th

The two rank him within 0 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 — 57 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 · 80 games

Top speed: 21.1 mph; 14th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.25 a game
Distance: 1.68 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.7 mph; 70th 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

2022-23 · 750 minutes at five-on-five

Patrick Brownnow BOS37%
Zack MacEwennow OTT26%
Tanner Laczynskioff the roster22%

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: PHI took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.1% — 3.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 750 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ivan Provorov	40.8%	45.9%	46.7%
Patrick Brown	42.0%	45.1%	50.1%
Travis Sanheim	47.6%	42.2%	45.4%

40.8% together, 45.9% for him apart and 46.7% for Provorov apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

102 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.