Armchair Hockey Scout

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2025-26 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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41

Nicolas Hague

Nashville Predators Defense

Six foot six and 245 pounds — the largest man in this edition — acquired from Vegas for Colton Sissons and Jeremy Lauzon.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20VGK3811011032100541.816:05
2020-21VGK5251217+1431000786.416:00
2021-22VGK5241014+6380001163.518:40
2022-23VGK8131417+7510011032.918:05
2023-24VGK7321012-5430011051.918:33
2024-25VGK685712-240001746.817:00
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—364206383+202351035303.817:33

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

68 games with Vegas, 5 goals and 7 assists for 12 points at 17:00 a night, on 74 shots at 6.76 per cent. 40 penalty minutes. Minus-2. He was traded to Nashville in June for Colton Sissons and Jeremy Lauzon.

Six seasons in Vegas, most of them on the third pair of a very good club, with a Stanley Cup in 2023. Seventeen minutes a night and twelve points is the ceiling as it has been used so far, which is not the same thing as the ceiling.

The Finesse Game

Limited, and honest about it. 6.76 per cent on 74 attempts from the point, a first pass that is safe rather than quick, and no meaningful carrying game. He does not run a breakout and has never been asked to.

The skating is the long-standing question. For 6-6 he moves adequately in a straight line, and he is beaten by a change of direction in a way that a top-four assignment will expose more often than a third pair did.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 245 pounds, the largest player on any roster in this edition. The reach ends plays that a normal defenceman has to chase, the crease is genuinely his, and a forward who wants the net front has to be moved through rather than around him.

40 penalty minutes is a modest number for that size, and it reflects a man who does not have to reach for anything.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick, a Stanley Cup in 2023, and six years of being the fifth-best defenceman on a club that had six good ones.

Nashville is going to play him twenty minutes a night. Nobody knows what that looks like, including Vegas — which is why he was available for two bottom-six players.

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.

  • 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.

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “The reach ends plays that a normal defenceman has to chase”

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “the crease is genuinely his”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “a forward who wants the net front has to be moved through rather than around him”

  • transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “He does not run a breakout and has never been asked to.”

  • fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step

    “40 penalty minutes is a modest number for that size, and it reflects a man who does not have to reach for anything.”

  • edgeshe lacks it· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone

    “he is beaten by a change of direction in a way that a top-four assignment will expose more often than a third pair did”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,086 minutes

Expected goals
47.7%
32nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.3%
27th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 42 against. Expected: 40.2 and 44.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
2nd
Numbers
32nd

The numbers rank him 30 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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, 2024-25 · 68 games

Top speed
20.7 mph
16th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
0.16 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
2.37 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
98.6 mph
94th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 89.7

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

2024-25 with VGK · 1086 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, 2024-25

The club
VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.7% — 5.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,086 minutes at five-on-five — 73rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Zach Whitecloud49.7%46.5%55.9%
Alex Pietrangelo47.5%47.8%55.1%
Brett Howden47.3%47.8%53.0%

49.7% together, 46.5% for him apart and 55.9% for Whitecloud apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Whitecloud 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

101 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.