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

Brad Marchand

A thousand and twenty-nine games, a thousand and fifty-one penalty minutes, and sixty-seven points at thirty-five.

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

2009-10	BOS	20	0	1	1	-3	20	0	0	0	32	0.0	11:58
2010-11	BOS	77	21	20	41	+25	51	2	5	2	149	14.1	13:59
2011-12	BOS	76	28	27	55	+31	87	5	1	3	167	16.8	17:37
2012-13	BOS	45	18	18	36	+23	27	4	2	5	91	19.8	16:58
2013-14	BOS	82	25	28	53	+36	64	1	5	5	149	16.8	15:57
2014-15	BOS	77	24	18	42	+5	95	2	2	5	180	13.3	16:54
2015-16	BOS	77	37	24	61	+21	90	6	4	6	250	14.8	18:36
2016-17	BOS	80	39	46	85	+18	81	9	3	8	226	17.3	19:26
2017-18	BOS	68	34	51	85	+25	63	8	1	8	182	18.7	19:43
2018-19	BOS	79	36	64	100	+15	96	10	3	9	231	15.6	19:37
2019-20	BOS	70	28	59	87	+25	82	5	1	5	185	15.1	19:27
2020-21	BOS	53	29	40	69	+26	46	4	4	5	143	20.3	18:55
2021-22	BOS	70	32	48	80	+16	97	7	2	6	242	13.2	19:15
2022-23	BOS	73	21	46	67	+27	74	9	0	4	183	11.5	18:32
2023-24	BOS	82	29	38	67	+2	78	7	3	6	207	14.0	19:06
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1029	401	528	929	+292	1051	79	36	77	2617	15.3	18:01

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

29 goals and 38 assists in 82 games — 67 points at 19:06 a night, plus-2, with 7 power-play goals, 3 shorthanded goals and 6 game-winners on 207 shots, converting at 14.01 per cent, and 78 penalty minutes. His first season as captain.

50.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,077 minutes, the 53rd percentile. His ice went 50-42 against an expectation of 45.22-45.12 — eleven fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

207 attempts at a median of 28 feet, with 31 per cent from inside 20 and 20 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 14.01 per cent at 35.

The hockey sense is the best on this club and it has been for a decade. He reads a play a beat before it happens, which is why he has 36 shorthanded goals — more than any other player in this edition — and why the production has not fallen away as the legs have.

38 assists and 528 for his career. He works below the goal line, holds the puck until a defenceman commits, and puts it where somebody is about to be.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 180, and he is the hardest man in this book to play against for his size. 1,051 penalty minutes in 1,029 games.

He is an agitator and it is the whole method — he talks, he finishes late, he gets under the skin of men eighty pounds heavier, and he draws the retaliation that puts them in the box instead of him. He crosses the line and he has always known exactly where it is.

He also finishes checks properly and wins pucks on the wall against defencemen, which the reputation obscures.

The Intangibles

Seventy-first overall in 2006 and 1,029 games, 401 goals and 929 points, all of them here, with a Stanley Cup in 2011 and a career plus-292.

He is 36 and took the captaincy in the first season after Bergeron. A club that lost two Hall of Fame centres and finished sixth in the league did it with a 35-year-old winger holding the room, and the sixty-seven points were close to the least of what he contributed.

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

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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 60 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 6.7%, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**38 assists and 528 for his career.** He works below the goal line, holds the puck until a defenceman commits, and puts it where somebody is about to be.”
agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“**He is an agitator and it is the whole method** — he talks, he finishes late, he gets under the skin of men eighty pounds heavier, and he draws the retaliation that puts them in the box instead of him.”
takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is
“**He crosses the line and he has always known exactly where it is.**”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“**5-9 and 180, and he is the hardest man in this book to play against for his size.** **1,051 penalty minutes in 1,029 games.**”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He also finishes checks properly and wins pucks on the wall against defencemen, which the reputation obscures.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He also finishes checks properly and wins pucks on the wall against defencemen, which the reputation obscures.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“**he has 36 shorthanded goals — more than any other player in this edition** — and why the production has not fallen away as the legs have.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“**A club that lost two Hall of Fame centres and finished sixth in the league did it with a 35-year-old winger holding the room**, and the sixty-seven points were close to the least of what he contributed.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,077 minutes

Expected goals: 50.1%; 54th pct
Shot attempts: 49.1%; 48th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 42 against. Expected: 45.2 and 45.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

99th

Numbers

54th

The report ranks him 45 points above where the numbers do. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 85 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 39th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.10 a game
Distance: 2.99 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.0 mph; 57th 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 · 1077 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: BOS took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,077 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Charlie Coyle	46.1%	57.2%	49.6%
Charlie McAvoy	50.0%	50.1%	51.3%
Hampus Lindholm	49.6%	50.4%	52.5%

46.1% together, 57.2% for him apart and 49.6% for Coyle 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

288 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.