Deep-Diving How Paul Cotter Plays the Game
Paul Cotter presents as one of the most interesting individual case studies on the team, if not the entire game of hockey.
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To me, Paul Cotter is and has been one of the most intriguing players on the team since he was acquired last off-season in a trade with the Vegas Golden Knights.
On one hand, he has the tools to be a legitimate middle-top-six weapon. His skating is strong, he has magnificent hands, and he possesses a quietly excellent shot. On the other hand, his processing abilities hinder any and all of that from making a legitimate impact in that regard because he thinks he needs to do everything himself.
With that brief synopsis in mind, let’s deep-dive Cotter’s game:
Skating and Hands
One of Cotter’s best attributes is his skating ability, which vastly contributes to his overall playstyle.
On top of being a burner with an incredibly high top speed (Cotter ranked in the 95th percentile for top speed in 2024-25, reaching 23.44 mph), he’s also one of the most explosive players in the league. Despite playing bottom-six minutes, he ended last season in the 91st percentile for speed bursts of 20+ mph, totaling 174, as compared to the league average of 76.5. Cotter generally plays the game at a very high pace, which is also illustrated by his ranking in the 85th percentile for bursts of 18-20 mph (566 total).
While both quick and fast, Cotter isn’t a particularly graceful skater. He’s a heavy forward, at 6’2, 213 pounds, so this comes as no surprise.
Cotter’s edges are generally pretty lackluster, unless he’s operating in a one-on-one situation with the goaltender. In the case he is, his hands do the bulk of the dirty work and allow him to use his somewhat limited agility to further lean into what his hands are doing. It’s what makes him so dangerous in the shootout. You can see in the clip below that his hands do the vast, vast majority of the heavy lifting for baiting the goaltender, but that his subtle opening up and lifting of his left toe at the end really allowed him to put home the shot:
Outside of that, though, Cotter’s turning, balance, and control on his edges aren’t an added benefit to his toolkit. He doesn’t stop and start at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t utilize quick turns and 180s to drop coverage or manipulate defenders. He’s more of a run-and-gun, straight-line player.
What Cotter can do, though, is use his genuinely elite hands while operating at full speed off the rush. It doesn’t matter if he’s skating at 15 mph or 23, he has a wide, wide collection of dangles to pull from and execute to perfection at any speed or pace. While his skating doesn’t lend itself to losing defenders, his hands certainly do, and they do just as much in eighth-gear as they do in first:
To me, this combination of speed and skill is what is most appealing about Cotter’s game. That doesn’t mean he’s one-dimensional, though.
Shooting
The other high-end part of Cotter’s game is his shot. From his wrister to his one-timer, he has a quality release that can beat goaltenders from just about every angle and distance.
This shot is particularly dangerous off the rush, as Cotter settles into more of a netfront, rebound-hound role once the Devils are established in the cycle. Prior to that settlement, though, it’s a thing of beauty. His wrist shot, in particular, is strong. He has a zippy, deceptive release and doesn’t need time to corral the puck onto his stick from a hard pass. The catch-and-release is nearly immediate, and he has pinpoint accuracy to boot.
His one-timer is strong off the rush, too, though he utilizes it significantly less. While operating in an odd-man scenario, Cotter positions himself well to receive passes, shifting his weight and turning his body so that he can openly and obviously put a one-timer on net. As you can see below, telegraphing it doesn’t change the positive outcome one bit:
The issue is that Cotter outright needs to shoot more. His wrist shot and one-timer are obvious strengths within his game, but he doesn’t utilize them as much as you would like to see. Sometimes, he just holds on to the puck for too long. Sometimes, he prioritizes trying to make the perfect play instead of just shooting it. Regardless, he ended the season with just 90 shots on goal — barely more than one per game (1.14). For someone who, outside of one outlier season, has never shot below 17.1%, this is a problem. Cotter doubled his individual expected goals (ixG) in 2024-25, scoring 16 on just 8.85 ixG for the year. That is a sign that he just needs to put the puck on net more frequently.
Heliocentrism
By definition, heliocentrism is a space term, detailing the astronomical model that places the Sun at the center of the solar system, with the planets orbiting around it.
In sports, while predominantly used in the NBA, heliocentrism takes on a similar definition, where a single player is the center of the team’s operations and everyone else supports it.
Cotter’s main issue, as a player, is his own perceived heliocentrism. By that, I mean that he has the firm belief that he has to do everything himself and generally plays pretty selfishly.
In some cases, heliocentrism in hockey is a great thing; transition-heavy players like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Jack Hughes use neutral-zone selfishness to draw attention and defensive coverage to themselves while their teammates benefit off of having more space to operate in. The difference between those players and Cotter, outside of pure skill, is that they have the IQ to find those teammates and perform heliocentrically with purpose. Cotter simply does it because he believes he is the best player on the ice at all times, and generally doesn’t like to play to his teammates.
Too often will you see Cotter try to attack the ice when he’s hounded by multiple defenders. Sometimes, as we as Devils fans have been privy to as observers, this works out, but those situations are few and far between. It was far more likely that his taking on two or more defenders resulted in a lost possession than a high-danger opportunity for himself or his team. Take the below sequence as an example of what his shift-to-shift work looked like in pertinence to selfishness:
It may have looked like it almost turned into a high-danger chance, sure, but the reality was that 1) it didn’t, and 2) he had several opportunities within that play to extend the possession and instead chose to try and do it all himself. Cotter had ample time to dole the puck out back to the point or, even more easily, hand it off to linemate Dawson Mercer, in order to keep possession of the puck. Instead, he attempts a one-on-two move in tight space and loses the puck, stifling any extended cycle opportunity that would have otherwise been there.
To me, it’s clear that this is just a gap in offensive IQ. Players like J. Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, and Timo Meier all have the capabilities to execute plays like this, but have the wherewithal to understand that the high-risk, heliocentric moves are rarely the best ways to generate chances. It’s a shame that Cotter doesn’t possess that slow-down-the-game ability that they do; otherwise, he would be a top-six caliber player, in my opinion. He has the raw ability beyond his brain.1
Forechecking
An obvious eye-test strength of Cotter’s is his forechecking aptitude and ability to recover pucks that were dumped in. A big-bodied 25-year-old like himself should be playing to that style of hockey, leaning into his size and speed in order to create space off the forecheck.
For the Devils, this would be best utilized up in the lineup, where Cotter would have the potential to be what fans thought Ondrej Palat was when he was brought onto the team — a dirty-work-centric complementary player for the high-end talent of the team. This doesn’t necessarily work because of the legitimate issue within Cotter’s game discussed in-depth above, but in an ideal world in which his brain processed what was and was not the right individual play to make, his forechecking capabilities would make him all the more appealing complement to the J. Hugheses and Bratts of the NHL.
Defense
While he didn’t touch the puck a whole lot in the defensive zone this past season — by pretty much all accounts, his defensive microstatistics were quite weak — Cotter’s defensive macro-impacts were reasonably strong this past season.
This tells me that positioning within his own zone is a strength within his game, be it by his own accord or by virtue of playing in the system he’s a part of. The eye test supports this hypothesis.
Cotter’s skating aptitude gives him the ability to overcommit in the name of puck pursuit, being able to recover quickly if he takes aggressive coverage a bit too far. Given that the Devils’ system is reliant on zone defense and exchanging the puck carrier to a different defender once they reach a certain area of the ice, Cotter’s defensive mindset, positioning, and penchant for quick recoveries all come as an asset to the team’s overarching defensive scheme.
Because of the dichotomy between his toolkit and his offensive processing abilities, Cotter, to me, is arguably the most astonishing case study on the Devils in terms of what could be. His skating abilities, hands, and shot all individually warrant looks in the top-six simply because of how high-end they are, and yet his offensive IQ lacks to such an extent that it doesn’t make sense to use him as a complementary piece in that capacity. The end result is a player whose skills make him seem too talented for a bottom-six role but whose ceiling is limited to just that: a relatively high-scoring, skilled, physical, and defensively apt fourth-liner.
Not too shabby an archetype for the Devils in particular, but a true shame when evaluating what could have been.
I just want to make it very clear that in no way am I calling Cotter a low-IQ player. To play in the NHL at all, you have to be extremely cerebral and high-processing, but the “I need to do it all, all the time” is an offensive IQ gap to be sure.