Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

81

Adam Gaudette

San Jose Sharks Right Wing

Nineteen goals on 90 shots — a 21.1 per cent conversion, the highest of any player in this edition.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18VAN5000+2000090.012:47
2018-19VAN565712-818001559.110:57
2019-20VAN59122133-7374017516.012:23
2020-21VAN/CHI405611-1512000667.611:08
2021-22CHI/OTT585914-917201945.311:19
2023-24STL20000400009:48
2024-25OTT8119726+12123049021.110:25
2025-26 so far
Career301465096-2510090738911.811:12

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

19 goals and 7 assists in 81 games for Ottawa — 26 points at 10:25 a night, plus-12, with 3 power-play goals and 4 game-winners on only 90 shots.

A 21.1 per cent conversion, which is the highest of any player in this edition who took fifty shots. Nineteen goals at ten minutes a night is a genuinely useful season and the method underneath it will not repeat: his previous career high was 12.

The Finesse Game

90 attempts and 19 goals. He goes to the net and converts what arrives there, and the volume is the problem — ninety shots in a full season is a fourth-line number.

7 assists in 81 games. There is no creation and there has not been since his junior career; he is a finisher on a checking line, which is an unusual and slightly awkward thing to be.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 190 and honest. He forechecks properly, he goes to the paint, and he does not initiate much beyond that.

12 penalty minutes in 81 games is a very low rate. He is disciplined and he kills penalties, and the physical game is functional rather than an asset.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick in 2015 out of Northeastern who won the Hobey Baker Award, and then spent five years being waived, traded and sent down — 301 NHL games across five organisations.

He is 29 and signed with San Jose in the summer after a career-best year in Ottawa. On a club that scored 204 goals, a man who converts at any rate at all is worth a look.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 713 minutes

Expected goals
47.6%
28th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.8%
50th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 35 against. Expected: 23.5 and 25.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
25th
Numbers
28th

The two rank him within 3 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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 with OTT · 713 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
OTT took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.6% — 2.6 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 713 minutes at five-on-five — 29th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Tyler Kleven39.6%52.1%46.2%
Thomas Chabot56.9%43.3%52.3%
Tim Stützle50.5%46.4%53.9%

39.6% together, 52.1% for him apart and 46.2% for Kleven 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

134 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.