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

Adam Gaudette

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

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2017-18	VAN	5	0	0	0	+2	0	0	0	0	9	0.0	12:47
2018-19	VAN	56	5	7	12	-8	18	0	0	1	55	9.1	10:57
2019-20	VAN	59	12	21	33	-7	37	4	0	1	75	16.0	12:23
2020-21	VAN/CHI	40	5	6	11	-15	12	0	0	0	66	7.6	11:08
2021-22	CHI/OTT	58	5	9	14	-9	17	2	0	1	94	5.3	11:19
2023-24	STL	2	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	—	9:48
2024-25	OTT	81	19	7	26	+12	12	3	0	4	90	21.1	10:25
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	301	46	50	96	-25	100	9	0	7	389	11.8	11:12

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 210 goals, a man who converts at any rate at all is worth a look.

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.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.15 penalty minutes a game over 81, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
65% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 96th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“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.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He is disciplined and he kills penalties, and the physical game is functional rather than an asset.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“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 numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 713 minutes

Expected goals: 52%; 70th pct
Shot attempts: 50.9%; 63rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 32 for, 15 against. Expected: 24.7 and 22.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

25th

Numbers

70th

The numbers rank him 45 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 81 games

Top speed: 21.8 mph; 31st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.40 a game
Distance: 1.66 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.9 mph; 58th 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

2024-25 with OTT · 713 minutes at five-on-five

Tim Stützle30%
Matthew Highmoreoff the roster23%
Nick Cousins23%

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 52.0% — 1.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 713 minutes at five-on-five — 29th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tyler Kleven	42.5%	56.5%	45.0%
Thomas Chabot	61.7%	46.6%	51.0%
Tim Stützle	57.4%	49.3%	53.1%

42.5% together, 56.5% for him apart and 45.0% for Kleven apart. He was better away from Kleven, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Kleven.

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.