Photo by Jfvoll, CC BY-SA 4.0
Nicolas Hague
Nashville Predators Defense #41
6-6, 245 pounds, and the heaviest man in this edition.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | VGK | 38 | 1 | 10 | 11 | 0 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 54 | 1.8 | 16:05 |
| 2020-21 | VGK | 52 | 5 | 12 | 17 | +14 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 6.4 | 16:00 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 52 | 4 | 10 | 14 | +6 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 116 | 3.5 | 18:40 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 81 | 3 | 14 | 17 | +7 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 103 | 2.9 | 18:05 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 73 | 2 | 10 | 12 | -5 | 43 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 105 | 1.9 | 18:33 |
| 2024-25 | VGK | 68 | 5 | 7 | 12 | -2 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 74 | 6.8 | 17:00 |
| 2025-26 | NSH | 62 | 3 | 12 | 15 | -10 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 56 | 5.4 | 19:38 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 426 | 23 | 75 | 98 | +10 | 282 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 586 | 3.9 | 17:51 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
3 goals and 12 assists in 62 games — 15 points, minus-10, at 19:38 a night with 47 penalty minutes.
The Finesse Game
Not the point. 89 unblocked attempts from a median of 52 feet, 9 per cent inside 20, 3 goals. 98 points in 426 career games.
The first pass is simple and safe. He is not going to add anything at the offensive blue line.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 245 pounds — the heaviest player in this edition. 47 penalty minutes, a cleared crease, and a reach that ends plays before they develop.
The skating is the limitation and always has been. He cannot recover when beaten and forwards know to change direction on him.
The Intangibles
46.9 per cent of the expected goals, 28th percentile, and 50.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 58th, across 1,088 minutes — below the line, and Nashville has 3 defencemen above him inside a single point of it, which says more about the blue line than about him.
The goals were 38-49, 5 worse than chances that were already against him.
He is 27, a second-round pick with a Stanley Cup from Vegas, and arrives on a club whose defence conceded the eighth-most expected goals in the league. He will help the net front. He will not fix the structure.
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
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-shot· beats a goaltender from range
3 of 64 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.7%, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,088 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 28th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 58th 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: 38 for, 49 against. Expected: 42.5 and 48.2.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 5 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2025-26 · 62 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 77th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.24 a game
- Distance
- 2.72 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.1 mph
- 79th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
3
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 3 assists, 16 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1072 minutes at five-on-five
- Nick Blankenburgoff the roster35%
- Nick Perbix21%
- Roman Josi17%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- NSH took 47.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 0.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,088 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Blankenburg | 50.6% | 44.8% | 53.6% |
| Erik Haula | 44.4% | 48.0% | 46.7% |
| Filip Forsberg | 43.3% | 48.4% | 50.4% |
50.6% together, 44.8% for him apart and 53.6% for Blankenburg apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Blankenburg and did not follow him.
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
89 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 59 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.