Photo by Wheatzilopochtli, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Simon Nemec
Calgary Flames Defense #71
The second pick in 2022, on his second club, still waiting to be what that meant.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | NJD | 60 | 3 | 16 | 19 | -7 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 73 | 4.1 | 19:52 |
| 2024-25 | NJD | 27 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -10 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 26 | 7.7 | 14:59 |
| 2025-26 | NJD | 68 | 11 | 15 | 26 | -11 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 101 | 10.9 | 19:40 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 155 | 16 | 33 | 49 | -28 | 73 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 200 | 8.0 | 18:56 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
11 goals and 15 assists in 68 games — 26 points, minus-11, at 19:40 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in New Jersey.
The Finesse Game
The skating and the first pass are legitimate. He retrieves under pressure without panicking and he can carry the puck out when the outlet is not there, which is the skill the 2nd overall pick was taken for.
11 goals is a surprising number and worth reading carefully: 160 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet with only 9 per cent inside 20. He is scoring from the point at a rate that will not repeat, the same trick Samuelsson pulled in Buffalo.
The Physical Game
6-1, 190, and he defends with position rather than force. 26 penalty minutes in 68 games of top-4 work.
He is not soft, but he is not going to win a net-front battle against a heavy winger, and at his age that is still the part most likely to improve.
The Intangibles
The results were unremarkable rather than bad: 48.7 per cent of the expected goals, 43rd percentile, and 49.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 54th, across 1,210 minutes. On a club that made the playoffs, that is a fair third season for a 21-year-old defenceman.
He is 22 and arrives in Calgary as the most valuable piece on a blue line that badly needs one. The pedigree says he should be more than an average top-4 defenceman. 3 seasons in, average is what the numbers say, and there is still plenty of time for that to be wrong.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,210 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.7%
- 44th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 54th 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: 47 for, 63 against. Expected: 49.8 and 52.5.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 11 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2025-26 · 68 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 39th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.26 a game
- Distance
- 2.86 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.5 mph
- 55th 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 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
3
points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 2 assists, 16 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 with NJD · 1210 minutes at five-on-five
- Luke Hughes19%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- NJD took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.7% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,210 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brenden Dillon | 50.1% | 47.6% | 50.5% |
| Timo Meier | 53.2% | 46.6% | 52.7% |
| Dawson Mercer | 52.8% | 47.0% | 51.8% |
50.1% together, 47.6% for him apart and 50.5% for Dillon 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
160 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.