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

Simon Nemec

Second overall in 2022, 19:52 a night at 19, and a chance share above even on a club that was 21st at suppression.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	60	3	16	19	-7	33	0	0	1	73	4.1	19:52

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

60 games, 3 goals and 16 assists for 19 points, 33 penalty minutes, 19:52 a night and minus-7. He took 51.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,042 minutes, the 64th percentile, and his ice went 49-47 against an expectation of 46.73-43.87.

Two goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and three more conceded than they called for. A chance share above even in a first season at 19, on a club whose chance suppression was 21st in the league.

The Finesse Game

73 shots at a median of 51 feet with 74 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 4.1 per cent.

16 assists in 60 games. He is a right-handed puck-mover and the first pass is already the best part of him; the shot from the point is ordinary and there is no power-play role yet. He walks the line without panicking.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 190 and defends with position rather than weight.

33 penalty minutes in 60 games at almost twenty a night is an ordinary rate for a teenager. He blocks shots and does not clear a crease.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2022 out of Liptovsky Mikulas, one season, and 19 points in 60 games.

He is 20 and played 19:52 a night in a first season. Second overall picks on the blue line take five years to judge and the first of them went considerably better than the plus-minus of the men around 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.

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.

transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is a right-handed puck-mover and the first pass is already the best part of him; the shot from the point is ordinary and there is no power-play role yet.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He walks the line without panicking.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots and does not clear a crease.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He blocks shots and does not clear a crease.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is 6-1 and 190 and defends with position rather than weight.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,042 minutes

Expected goals: 51.6%; 65th pct
Shot attempts: 49.9%; 54th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 47 against. Expected: 46.7 and 43.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

51st

Numbers

65th

The two rank him within 14 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2023-24 · 60 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 60th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.30 a game
Distance: 2.94 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.0 mph; 34th 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

2023-24 · 1042 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: NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.6% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,042 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jonas Siegenthaler	45.2%	54.8%	50.3%
Dawson Mercer	53.9%	50.6%	46.0%
Nico Hischier	52.7%	51.1%	53.8%

45.2% together, 54.8% for him apart and 50.3% for Siegenthaler apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

111 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.