This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Noah Dobson
Montreal Canadiens Defense
39 points and 196 shots at 25, and the largest acquisition this organisation has made in a decade.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | NYI | 34 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 2.7 | 13:17 |
| 2020-21 | NYI | 46 | 3 | 11 | 14 | +1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 69 | 4.3 | 16:24 |
| 2021-22 | NYI | 80 | 13 | 38 | 51 | -3 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 190 | 6.8 | 21:28 |
| 2022-23 | NYI | 78 | 13 | 36 | 49 | +4 | 20 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 206 | 6.3 | 20:23 |
| 2023-24 | NYI | 79 | 10 | 60 | 70 | +12 | 36 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 174 | 5.8 | 24:31 |
| 2024-25 | NYI | 71 | 10 | 29 | 39 | -16 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 196 | 5.1 | 23:16 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 388 | 50 | 180 | 230 | -3 | 118 | 10 | 0 | 11 | 872 | 5.7 | 20:53 |
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
10 goals and 29 assists in 71 games for 39 points, minus-16, on 23:16 a night with the Islanders and 196 shots.
A 70-point season two years ago and 39 in this one, on a club that collapsed around him. The minus-16 belongs largely to the environment and the drop in production is harder to dismiss.
The Finesse Game
A genuine offensive defenceman. The shot from the point is heavy and he takes a lot of them — 196 attempts is a high volume — and the first pass is quick and accurate enough to run a breakout by himself.
29 assists is well short of the 60-point seasons he has had, and the reason is partly that the club around him could not finish. The puck-carrying is good rather than dominant; he moves it more than he takes it.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 200, and he defends with reach and position rather than force. He is not a punishing defenceman and does not clear a crease decisively.
28 penalty minutes over 71 games is disciplined. The durability has been reasonable — he has cleared 70 games in four of six seasons.
The Intangibles
A first-round pick, seven seasons on Long Island, a 70-point year, a difficult contract negotiation, and a trade at 25 that cost Montreal two first-round picks and a forward.
That is a substantial price and the projection justifies it: a right-shot top-pair defenceman at 25 to play beside Lane Hutson. It is the most consequential thing this club has done since drafting him.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- 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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
54.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.2, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“the first pass is quick and accurate enough to run a breakout by himself”
“The puck-carrying is good rather than dominant; he moves it more than he takes it.”
“6-4 and 200, and he defends with reach and position rather than force.”
“He is not a punishing defenceman and does not clear a crease decisively.”
“He is not a punishing defenceman and does not clear a crease decisively.”
“28 penalty minutes over 71 games is disciplined.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,252 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.1%
- 86th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.4%
- 85th 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: 49 for, 47 against. Expected: 53.2 and 45.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 — 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 90th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.08 a game
- Distance
- 3.27 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.2 mph
- 54th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
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 NYI · 1252 minutes at five-on-five
- Adam Pelech14%
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
- NYI took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.1% — 4.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,252 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander Romanov | 54.6% | 53.8% | 45.5% |
| Kyle Palmieri | 53.2% | 54.6% | 46.1% |
| Bo Horvat | 53.4% | 54.5% | 50.6% |
54.6% together, 53.8% for him apart and 45.5% for Romanov apart. Romanov was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Romanov than for 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
288 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.