The Basics
Name: Nick Paul
Position: Center
Counting Stats: 82 Games, 24 Goals, 22 Assists, 17:16 TOI
Extra Stats (5v5): 50.71 CF%, 48.17 SF%, 44.23 GF%, 49.74 xGF%, 51.10 HDCF%, .889 On-ice Save Percentage, 12.44 iXG
2023-24 Contract: Year 2 of a 7-year, $22.05 million contract
Contract Status: 5 years left at $3.15 million per season
The Charts
The Review
When everything was said and done, Nick Paul had himself a pretty strong season. He put up a career-high in goals, cracking the 20-goal mark for the first time in his seven-year career as he potted 24. A career-high 252 minutes of power play ice time helped boost his offensive totals as the 14 points (9 goals, 5 assists) he recorded with the extra skater more than doubled his career totals entering the season.
Unlike the 2022-23 season where he started off hot and then went ice-cold in the second half of the season, Paul managed to score consistently throughout the season and ended up with a career-high 46 points in his age 28 season. According to some metrics, Nick Paul might have provided one of the best values on the team last season.
Evolving Hockey uses standing points above replacement as one of their catch-all stats. As our former boss, loserpoints, wrote back in 2020,
“That’s why Evolving Hockey last year introduced Standings Points Above Replacement (SPAR). Intuitively, saying a player is worth 7 SPAR gives a more immediate sense of value than saying a player is worth 3.2 WAR. If you tell me a player takes a team from 41 to 44 wins, I know that’s useful but it doesn’t translate directly to the standings. If you tell me a player takes a team from 89 points to 96 points, I know exactly what that means. They went from being out of the playoffs to being a bubble team.”
According to Evolving Hockey, Nikita Kucherov led the team in SPAR at 7.8 while Brandon Hagel was second at 6.7. Somewhat surprisingly, Nick Paul, jack-of-all-trades, was third at 4.9. Evolving Hockey does place a dollar amount on SPAR which allows them to determine the “value” a player provided over the season. For Paul, they determined his performance was worth $11.4 million, not bad for a player on a $3.5 million cap hit.
Paul isn’t the flashiest player by any means, but he is willing to do what he needs to do in front of the net and in the corners to help keep possession and create opportunities. As the chart from All Three Zones shows above, he isn’t extremely flawed in any one aspect of the game, does a lot of things well, and some things really well (rebounds).
The 6’3″, 229 lb. forward slid into the Alex Killorn role last season after The Harvard Man left for the West Coast. Paul took up the down low role on the first power play unit while flitting about between a position on the wing on the second line and at center on the third line. He meshed pretty well with Brandon Hagel as the two were on the ice together for 16 goals and 57.89% of the scoring chances.
While he’s likely penciled in for the third-line center spot next season, perhaps he plays himself up a line if he continues to produce offensively with Anthony Cirelli swapping spots in a more defensive-minded role. Paul could also find himself on the second line in a winger role if Coach Cooper wants to go that route. Over the last two seasons he’s shown that he can adapt to pretty much whatever job the team needs him to do.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see him have a similar career arc as Killorn did. In 2018-19, Killorn had his breakout season putting up 15 goals and 32 assists in his age 28 season. He would go on to eclipse 40 points in four of his next five seasons before signing with the Ducks. With Paul signed long-term at $3.5 million per season, getting 45-50 points out of him over the next few seasons would be extremely valuable for the Lightning.
Not only did he have a solid offensive season, he graded out well defensively. Hockey Reference had him in the 83rd percentile among NHL forwards, honestly, an extraordinary number based on the rest of the Lightning attackers last season. Hockey Viz shows opponents with a lower expected goals with Paul on the ice than with him off, and although he saw a decline in his penalty killing minutes, he was still fairly good shorthanded.
Overall, it was a good season for Paul and there is no reason to expect him to drop off next year as he should have a very similar role. With the Lightning seemingly focusing on more of a net-front game based on their additions, there is also a chance that Paul, who was second on the team with 16 tipped shots could even flourish a little more. With Steven Stamkos in Nashville and Jake Guentzel’s acclimatation into the line-up an unknown for now, it would be nice to see Nick Paul plugging his way to another 20 goal season.
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