Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

76

Brady Skjei

Nashville Predators Defense

Forty-seven points from the blue line in Carolina, and eleven goals of scoring that never arrived on his ice.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16NYR7000+1400060.017:44
2016-17NYR8053439+11420001273.917:28
2017-18NYR8242125-27390111532.621:02
2018-19NYR7881725-4440011266.321:14
2019-20NYR/CAR6781624-10450011395.820:42
2020-21CAR523710+6300011042.920:44
2021-22CAR8293039+22480001844.921:09
2022-23CAR81182038+7404131889.621:49
2023-24CAR80133447+15401121857.021:17
2024-25 so far
Career60968179247+2133253912125.620:39

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

80 games in Carolina, 13 goals and 34 assists for 47 points, 1 on the power play, 1 shorthanded, 40 penalty minutes, 21:17 a night and plus-15. He took 53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,404 minutes, the 81st percentile, and his ice went 50-46 against an expectation of 61.07-52.55, all of it with the Hurricanes.

Eleven goals of scoring that did not arrive and seven fewer conceded than the chances called for. Carolina finished last in the league at finishing and an 81st-percentile chance share that produced a 50-46 ledger is what that looks like from the blue line.

The Finesse Game

185 shots at a median of 49 feet with 68 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 7.0 per cent against a career 5.61.

179 career assists in 609 games. Thirteen goals is his second-best season, after the eighteen he scored the year before, and it came from a shot that gets through — he walks the line and puts it on net rather than looking for a seam. The skating is the best part of him and always has been.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 210 and finishes checks without being nasty about it.

332 career penalty minutes in 609 games is a low rate for a defenceman who plays twenty-one minutes. He closes gaps early, blocks shots and kills penalties, and has 3 career shorthanded goals.

The Intangibles

Twenty-eighth overall in 2012 out of Lakeville, Minnesota, three years at Minnesota, nine seasons across three organisations, and 247 points in 609 games.

He is 30 and has just had the best offensive season of his career on the club with the best shot share in hockey. Nashville is paying for the forty-seven points and buying a second-pair defenceman who skates.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,404 minutes

Expected goals
53.8%
81st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
58.2%
97th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 46 against. Expected: 61.1 and 52.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
86th
Numbers
81st

The two rank him within 5 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 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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

2023-24 with CAR · 1404 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
CAR took 56.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,404 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brett Pesce54.0%53.0%60.1%
Sebastian Aho50.1%55.7%57.9%
Jordan Martinook54.5%53.5%61.7%

54.0% together, 53.0% for him apart and 60.1% for Pesce apart. Pesce was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

280 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.