This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nicolas Roy
Vegas Golden Knights Center
The fifth percentile of zone starts, a sixteen-foot median, and five game-winning goals.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | CAR | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 10:46 |
| 2018-19 | CAR | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 6:57 |
| 2019-20 | VGK | 28 | 5 | 5 | 10 | +3 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 42 | 11.9 | 11:26 |
| 2020-21 | VGK | 50 | 6 | 9 | 15 | +9 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 52 | 11.5 | 13:01 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 78 | 15 | 24 | 39 | +12 | 51 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 145 | 10.3 | 16:15 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 65 | 14 | 16 | 30 | +10 | 24 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 101 | 13.9 | 16:18 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 228 | 40 | 54 | 94 | +33 | 99 | 6 | 0 | 10 | 342 | 11.7 | 14:42 |
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
14 goals and 16 assists in 65 games — 30 points — at 16:18 a night. Plus-10, 101 shots at 13.9 per cent, three on the power play, five game-winners, 24 penalty minutes.
Five game-winning goals from a third-line centre is the sort of line that gets a man a reputation, and it is worth saying plainly that this book has found no evidence anywhere that timing of that kind repeats.
50.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 849 minutes, the 50th percentile, with his ice at 32-29 against an expectation of 33.72-33.00.
He started 33.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 5th percentile: 143 attacking draws against 283 defensive ones.
A dead-even chance share out of the fifth percentile of starts is one of the best deployment-adjusted seasons in this chapter, and 30 points is what the newspaper recorded.
The Finesse Game
101 shots at a median of 16 feet, with 60 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 12 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside twenty feet: 63 shots on goal and eight goals — 12.70 per cent, below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 27 shots and four goals, 14.81 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 12 shots and two goals.
Sixty-three shots on goal from inside twenty feet is a large volume for a third-line centre and 12.70 per cent is well under what the league gets from there.
139 tracked attempts, 73 of them wrist shots, 25 tip-ins — an 18.0 per cent share — and four slap. 88.6 mph at the 35th percentile.
40 goals in 228 career games at 11.7 per cent. The shot is ordinary and the position is not: at 6-4 he stands where the puck arrives and gets a stick on it.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 200 pounds, which is tall and thin, with 24 penalty minutes in 65 games and 99 in 228 career games.
Top speed 21.7 mph at the 20th percentile, 0.3 bursts above twenty a game at the 12th, 2.57 miles a game at the 49th. Slow, rarely quick, and covering ordinary ground.
That is a startling line for a centre taking the fifth percentile of starts, and it says the defensive work is entirely positional.
He wins the wall and protects the puck below the goal line, which at 6-4 with a long reach is how a slow centre gets out of his own end.
He kills penalties and takes the defensive-zone draw, which the zone-start column makes visible without being able to say who wins the faceoff.
He is not punishing and does not seek contact; the size is used to shield rather than to hit.
The Intangibles
Ninety-sixth overall in 2015, the fourth round, six seasons, 228 games, 94 points across Carolina and Vegas, and a Stanley Cup.
40 goals and 54 assists, and a plus-33.
He is twenty-six, and the third-line centre job on a club that has just won is his for as long as he wants it.
A fourth-round pick taking the fifth percentile of starts to a fifty per cent chance share, with fourteen goals on top, is a genuinely valuable player who will never be described as one. That is most of what this book is for.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
71.4% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
34% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He wins the wall and protects the puck below the goal line, which at 6-4 with a long reach is how a slow centre gets out of his own end.”
“He kills penalties and takes the defensive-zone draw, which the zone-start column makes visible without being able to say who wins the faceoff.”
“He is not punishing and does not seek contact; the size is used to shield rather than to hit.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 849 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.5%
- 57th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.3%
- 40th 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: 32 for, 29 against. Expected: 33.7 and 33.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 21 points above where the numbers do. 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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 · 65 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 30th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.29 a game
- Distance
- 2.57 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 88.6 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
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.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 849 minutes at five-on-five
- Phil Kesseloff the roster18%
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
- VGK took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 849 minutes at five-on-five — 44th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keegan Kolesar | 49.0% | 52.3% | 49.3% |
| William Carrier | 52.5% | 49.2% | 57.2% |
| Alex Pietrangelo | 48.9% | 51.4% | 52.7% |
49.0% together, 52.3% for him apart and 49.3% for Kolesar apart. He was better away from Kolesar, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Kolesar.
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
140 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 60% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.