Brady Tkachuk

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

35 goals and 48 assists in 82 games — 83 points — at 18:38 a night. Minus-10, 347 shots at 10.1 per cent, eleven on the power play, six game-winners, and 126 penalty minutes, the third-most in the league.

55.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 90th percentile, with his ice at 60-60 against an expectation of 59.21-47.59 — twelve and a half goals worse than the chances at the defensive end.

He started 59.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 90th percentile: 495 attacking draws against 333.

Five seasons, 359 games, 275 points, 493 penalty minutes, all of them here.

The Finesse Game

347 shots at a median of 17 feet, and 486 tracked attempts — more than any other man in this chapter.

One hundred and eighty-four shots on goal from inside twenty feet, fourth in the league behind McDavid, Zach Hyman and Matthew Tkachuk. And 25 goals from them, at 13.59 per cent against a league forward rate of 17.71.

Those two sentences are the whole file and they pull in opposite directions. Nobody in the league gets to the front of the net more often; almost nobody converts from there less well. Twenty to forty feet: 95 shots and 9 goals, 9.47 per cent, also below the league. Beyond forty: 59 shots and one goal.

87 tip-ins out of 486 attempts, the second-highest count in the league behind Chris Kreider’s 98, with 243 wrist shots and just eight slap shots. 92.0 mph at the 59th percentile, on eight slap shots, so it means nothing.

Thirty-five goals on 347 shots is a volume result. The chances are extraordinary and the finishing is not, and both halves have been true for five seasons.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 226 pounds, with 126 penalty minutes and 493 in his career.

Top speed 21.8 mph, the 23rd percentile; 0.7 bursts a game, the 38th; 2.65 miles a game, the 57th.

Below the league in speed and at it in ground covered. None of what he is worth is in the skating and this is the clearest case in the book of tracking data saying nothing useful about a player.

He goes to the net and stays there against anybody. He forechecks by arriving heavy, wins pucks along the wall against defencemen thirty pounds heavier, and fights when the club needs it. The 184 shots from inside twenty feet are the measurement of all of that, and they are the reason he is the captain at twenty-three.

The penalty minutes are the cost and they are not small on a club whose penalty kill finished twenty-first.

The Intangibles

Fourth overall in 2018, the captaincy since twenty-two, and 359 games without a playoff appearance.

125 goals and 150 assists in five seasons, with a career minus-58 that belongs to the roster around him as much as to him.

He is twenty-four. What the file needs is not more chances — nobody generates more from close range — but the finishing to move two points toward the league average. That single change is worth eight goals a season and it is the whole difference between the player he is and the one his shot chart says he should be.