Nicolas Hague

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

52 games, 4 goals and 10 assists at 18:40 a night, plus-6, thirty-eight penalty minutes, 116 shots. Thirty-fourth overall in 2017 by Vegas — the second round — three seasons, 142 games, 42 points.

The Finesse Game

7.17 shots per 60 is the 9th-most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games — and four goals from 116 shots is 3.4 per cent, the 29th percentile. His shot is 97.3 mph at the 76th percentile and it is going in three and a half times in a hundred.

A 47-foot median with sixty-five per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet, which is shorter than most point men manage and is the one hint that the volume is not purely a blue-line habit.

0.96 even-strength points per 60 is the 52nd percentile and none of his fourteen points came on the power play.

1.55 takeaways per 60 is the 89th percentile.

51.8 per cent of the expected goals is the 65th percentile and 52.0 per cent of the attempts the 72nd, out of 53.4 per cent offensive-zone starts.

His ice went 42-45 against an expectation of 39.56-36.79 — two and a half ahead in front and eight more against than the model asked, which is the worst defensive ledger on the club.

And the with-and-without says where it came from. Hague and Alex Pietrangelo played 1,114 attempts together — the largest pairing on the roster — at 46.6 per cent. Pietrangelo without him was 55.6. Nine points of share, on the biggest sample the club produced.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 245 pounds, the fifth-heaviest man in this edition, with 4.95 blocks per 60 at the 72nd percentile and 1:32 a night short-handed.

3.52 hits per 60 is the 42nd percentile, which for that frame is low, and 1.17 penalties taken per 60 is the 92nd percentile against 0.49 drawn — a net of minus 0.68, the 16th-worst of the 202.

Thirty-eight penalty minutes in fifty-two games, and 101 across 142 career games.

The Intangibles

21.3 mph is the 19th percentile among the 192 tracked defencemen, 2.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 69th and 8.68 miles per 60 the 73rd. Slow top end, ordinary everything else, which at 6-6 is not a surprise and is not an excuse either.

He is 23, a second-round pick of this club, with forty-two points in 142 games. The shot volume and the frame are two real things and the penalty differential and the Pietrangelo pairing are two real problems. The honest reading is a 23-year-old asked to play top-four minutes a year or two early, and the eight goals over expectation are what that costs.