This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Nicolas Roy

Six-foot-four, a Stanley Cup ring, and the man Vegas sent back for Mitch Marner.

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	VGK	70	13	28	41	+8	29	1	1	2	112	11.6	15:27
2024-25	VGK	71	15	16	31	-4	43	2	0	3	107	14.0	15:13
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	369	68	98	166	+37	171	9	1	15	561	12.1	14:56

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

15 goals and 16 assists in 71 games for Vegas — 31 points at 15:13 a night, minus-4, with 2 power-play goals, 3 game-winners and 43 penalty minutes on 107 shots.

A 14.0 per cent conversion at fifteen minutes a night from a third-line centre on a club that finished with 110 points. He has scored 15 goals three times in four seasons.

The Finesse Game

107 attempts and 15 goals. The shot is functional and he gets to the net to use it.

16 assists in 71 games. There is not much creation; the value is that he wins the draw that begins the shift, makes the correct first pass, and does not turn the puck over in his own end.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 200 and he plays a heavy, honest game. He forechecks with force, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he is difficult to move off possession.

43 penalty minutes in 71 games is a moderate rate. He plays with an edge and he does not back out of anything, and he is not an agitator by trade.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick of Carolina in 2015 and 369 games and 166 points, with a Stanley Cup in Vegas in 2023.

He is 28 and Toronto acquired him in the summer as the return in the trade that sent Mitch Marner to Vegas, which is not a comparison anybody wants to make and is the one that will be made.

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
64.7% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“the value is that he wins the draw that begins the shift, makes the correct first pass, and does not turn the puck over in his own end.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“the value is that he wins the draw that begins the shift, makes the correct first pass, and does not turn the puck over in his own end.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks with force, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he is difficult to move off possession.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks with force, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he is difficult to move off possession.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He forechecks with force, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he is difficult to move off possession.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He plays with an edge and he does not back out of anything, and he is not an agitator by trade.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 884 minutes

Expected goals: 50.5%; 58th pct
Shot attempts: 50.7%; 61st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 33 against. Expected: 34.7 and 34.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

66th

Numbers

58th

The two rank him within 8 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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 · 71 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 14th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.39 a game
Distance: 2.46 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.8 mph; 58th 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

2024-25 with VGK · 884 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 50.5% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 884 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Keegan Kolesar	50.2%	50.8%	50.4%
Noah Hanifin	52.5%	49.1%	56.5%
Alex Pietrangelo	51.9%	49.7%	53.8%

50.2% together, 50.8% for him apart and 50.4% for Kolesar apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

150 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.