Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

53

Noah Dobson

New York Islanders Defense

Sixty assists from the blue line at 24, sixth among defencemen in this edition.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20NYI34167-18000372.713:17
2020-21NYI4631114+18000694.316:24
2021-22NYI80133851-3183041906.821:28
2022-23NYI78133649+4205022066.320:23
2023-24NYI79106070+12361041745.824:31
2024-25 so far
Career31740151191+139090106765.920:21

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

79 games, 10 goals and 60 assists for 70 points, 1 on the power play, 36 penalty minutes, 24:31 a night and plus-12. He took 49.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,532 minutes, the 50th percentile, and his ice went 71-53 against an expectation of 64.28-65.22.

Seven goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and twelve fewer conceded than they called for. Sixty assists is sixth among defencemen in this edition and it came with exactly one power-play goal, which is a strange pair of numbers.

The Finesse Game

250 attempts at a median of 53 feet, with 5 per cent from inside twenty and 75 per cent from beyond forty, 174 on goal, converted at 5.8 per cent.

151 career assists in 317 games. He is not a shooter and the chart says so; the whole of the offence is the outlet pass and walking the line to open a lane for somebody else. At 6-4 he carries the puck out of his own zone rather than rimming it.

The Physical Game

He is 6-4 and 200 and defends with reach and stick rather than by hitting anybody.

36 penalty minutes in 79 games at nearly twenty-five a night is a low rate. He blocks shots and kills penalties, and he does not clear a crease at that size.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2018 out of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, five seasons, 317 games and 191 points, all of it for one organisation.

He is 24 and took 24:31 a night with both of the club’s shutdown defencemen missing a third of the season. Seventy points from the blue line on a twenty-second-place attack is the most valuable thing this roster produced.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,532 minutes

Expected goals
49.6%
50th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49%
46th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 71 for, 53 against. Expected: 64.3 and 65.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
93rd
Numbers
50th

The report ranks him 43 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 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1532 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, 2023-24

The club
NYI took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.6% — 0.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,532 minutes at five-on-five — 98th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Alexander Romanov49.8%49.5%47.4%
Mathew Barzal51.5%48.4%53.8%
Bo Horvat52.4%48.0%53.7%

49.8% together, 49.5% for him apart and 47.4% for Romanov 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

250 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.