Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

59

Roman Josi

Nashville Predators Defense

25:02 a night and the best chance share on the blue line at 35, shut down in March after 53 games, and a line that scored 25 goals on 42.9 expected.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2011-12NSH5251116+114100647.818:23
2012-13NSH4851318-78101965.223:32
2013-14NSH72132740-2183021687.726:25
2014-15NSH81154055+15263042017.526:28
2015-16NSH81144761-3436131987.125:29
2016-17NSH72123749+7187012175.525:04
2017-18NSH75143953+24247032535.524:28
2018-19NSH82154156+9422042745.525:10
2019-20NSH69164965+22414012606.225:47
2020-21NSH4882533-11201031415.724:21
2021-22NSH80237396+134611022818.225:33
2022-23NSH67184159+5368052696.725:10
2023-24NSH82236285+12459052688.624:38
2024-25NSH5392938-26182011506.025:02
2025-26 so far
Career962190534724+593996513528406.724:52

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

53 games, 9 goals and 29 assists for 38 points at 25:02 a night — the heaviest workload on the club and among the heaviest in the league — before he was shut down in March. 150 shots at 6 per cent. 18 penalty minutes. Minus-26.

A 51.1 per cent chance share is the best of any regular on this blue line, and the on-ice goals are the club’s season in miniature: 25 for against an expected 42.87, and 35 against an expected 41.05. His line conceded six fewer goals than it deserved to and scored eighteen fewer than it should have. On the evidence he was comfortably the best defenceman on the roster, and he was minus-26.

The Finesse Game

The skating is still the foundation and it is still very good — long strides, the blue line gained under control, pivots that do not cost him speed. At 35 the top gear has gone and the edges have not.

64 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet at a median of 46, which is the current version of his game: he runs the breakout, joins the rush, and shoots from the point rather than the circle. 29 assists in 53 games is a rate that would have finished near 45 across a season.

The Physical Game

201 pounds and never a punishing defenceman. He defends by anticipation and stick position, does not clear a crease by force, and takes 18 penalty minutes in 53 games doing it.

Against a heavy forecheck the puck can be taken off him below his own goal line, and on a club with this little help that happened more than it used to.

The Intangibles

A Norris Trophy, a captaincy, and fourteen seasons in one uniform.

He is 35, he played 53 games, and he was shut down in March. The club’s next three years depend on a defenceman whose last season ended a month early, and there is no succession plan anywhere on the roster.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 993 minutes

Expected goals
51.1%
63rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
55.2%
92nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 35 against. Expected: 42.9 and 41.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
63rd

The two rank him within 13 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 357 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

2024-25 · 993 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
NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
993 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Filip Forsberg50.4%51.5%46.3%
Jonathan Marchessault50.3%51.5%46.8%
Gustav Nyquist51.1%51.1%50.5%

50.4% together, 51.5% for him apart and 46.3% for Forsberg apart. Forsberg was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Forsberg 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

230 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.