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

Brady Skjei

Seven years and $49 million for a defenceman who played 21:53 a night at the 23rd percentile in chance share and took 72 per cent of his shots from beyond 40 feet.

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

2015-16	NYR	7	0	0	0	+1	4	0	0	0	6	0.0	17:44
2016-17	NYR	80	5	34	39	+11	42	0	0	0	127	3.9	17:28
2017-18	NYR	82	4	21	25	-27	39	0	1	1	153	2.6	21:02
2018-19	NYR	78	8	17	25	-4	44	0	0	1	126	6.3	21:14
2019-20	NYR/CAR	67	8	16	24	-10	45	0	0	1	139	5.8	20:42
2020-21	CAR	52	3	7	10	+6	30	0	0	1	104	2.9	20:44
2021-22	CAR	82	9	30	39	+22	48	0	0	0	184	4.9	21:09
2022-23	CAR	81	18	20	38	+7	40	4	1	3	188	9.6	21:49
2023-24	CAR	80	13	34	47	+15	40	1	1	2	185	7.0	21:17
2024-25	NSH	82	10	23	33	-24	42	2	0	1	156	6.4	21:53
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	691	78	202	280	-3	374	7	3	10	1368	5.7	20:47

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

82 games, 10 goals and 23 assists for 33 points at 21:53 a night — the second-heaviest workload on the club behind Roman Josi, and the heaviest once Josi was shut down in March. 156 shots at 6.4 per cent. Minus-24. This was the first year of the seven-year contract signed in July 2024.

The chance share is where the trouble is. 46.9 per cent across 1,369 five-on-five minutes is the 23rd percentile in the league, and the on-ice goals were 41-63 against an expected 53.15-59.96 — his line was outscored by nineteen while the chances said seven. Ten of that gap is finishing and nine is goaltending, and none of it is flattering to a defenceman paid to be the second-best one on the roster.

The Finesse Game

A good skater for his size, and the least creative part of his game is the part he is paid for.

72 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet at a median of 50. This is a point shot and nothing else, and 6.4 per cent on 156 attempts is what a point shot returns when there is nobody standing in front of it.

The first pass is functional rather than quick. He does not break a forecheck by himself and he does not carry the puck out of trouble under pressure; he moves it to the nearest available option, and on a bad night the nearest available option is the wall.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210 and willing in front of his own net, and 42 penalty minutes is about the right number for the assignment.

He closes a rush with reach and body position rather than by stepping up, which is the conservative choice and the one that concedes the blue line to a skilled winger. Where it comes apart is the second and third effort — a play that cycles behind him for twenty seconds finds him a step out of position by the end of it.

The Intangibles

82 games, and he has now played at least 76 in eight of the last nine seasons. That durability is real and a large part of what he was bought for.

The contract is what the club has to live with. He is 31, signed through 2031, and the season underneath the money was the worst chance share of his career. On a club that finished 9th in the league in shot-attempt share, he was the regular least responsible for it.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He closes a rush with reach and body position rather than by stepping up, which is the conservative choice and the one that concedes the blue line to a skilled winger.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He does not break a forecheck by himself and he does not carry the puck out of trouble under pressure; he moves it to the nearest available option, and on a bad night the nearest available option is the wall.”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“Where it comes apart is the second and third effort — a play that cycles behind him for twenty seconds finds him a step out of position by the end of it.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“6-3 and 210 and willing in front of his own net”
playmakerpresent and ordinary· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The first pass is functional rather than quick.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,369 minutes

Expected goals: 47%; 26th pct
Shot attempts: 50.5%; 58th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 41 for, 63 against. Expected: 53.1 and 60.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

11th

Numbers

26th

The two rank him within 15 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 — 64 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 77th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.87 a game
Distance: 3.09 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.3 mph; 46th 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 · 1369 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: NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.0% — 2.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,369 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nick Blankenburg	47.8%	46.1%	61.1%
Ryan O'Reilly	48.8%	46.1%	51.3%
Filip Forsberg	48.0%	46.4%	49.1%

47.8% together, 46.1% for him apart and 61.1% for Blankenburg apart. Blankenburg 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

210 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.