This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brandon Carlo
Boston Bruins Defense
Twenty-eight goals in 554 games, the worst chance share of the top four, and nineteen goals of margin on his ice.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | BOS | 82 | 6 | 10 | 16 | +9 | 59 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 88 | 6.8 | 20:49 |
| 2017-18 | BOS | 76 | 0 | 6 | 6 | +10 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 76 | 0.0 | 19:14 |
| 2018-19 | BOS | 72 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +22 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 116 | 1.7 | 20:55 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 67 | 4 | 15 | 19 | +16 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 111 | 3.6 | 20:29 |
| 2020-21 | BOS | 27 | 3 | 1 | 4 | +1 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 43 | 7.0 | 18:43 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 79 | 6 | 9 | 15 | +2 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 125 | 4.8 | 19:42 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 75 | 3 | 13 | 16 | +44 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 94 | 3.2 | 18:50 |
| 2023-24 | BOS | 76 | 4 | 10 | 14 | +23 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 5.1 | 19:54 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 554 | 28 | 72 | 100 | +127 | 307 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 732 | 3.8 | 19:55 |
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
4 goals and 10 assists in 76 games — 14 points at 19:54 a night, plus-23, on 79 shots with 42 penalty minutes.
45.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,258 minutes, the 20th percentile — the worst mark of the top four defencemen. His ice went 57-47 against an expectation of 45.82-55.47 — eleven goals scored above expectation and eight fewer conceded, nineteen goals of margin against a chance share that says he was underwater all year.
That gap is the whole club’s season in one man’s ledger, and it is not his.
The Finesse Game
79 attempts at a median of 54 feet, with 77 per cent from beyond 40 and 6 per cent from inside 20, converting at 5.06 per cent. Twenty-eight goals in 554 NHL games.
Ten assists. He does not carry the puck out and he does not create anything — the first pass is short, safe and off the glass when it needs to be, and the club asks for nothing else.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 227, and this is the report. He defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around — the stick arrives before the body does and the puck carrier runs out of ice on the outside.
He blocks shots as a matter of course and he clears the front of his own net. 42 penalty minutes in 76 games and 307 in 554 for his career is a clean rate for a man who defends this way, because he is very rarely beaten to the place where a foul is the only option left.
The Intangibles
Thirty-seventh overall in 2015 and 554 games, all of them here, with a career plus-127 and a hundred points.
He is 27. A defenceman whose entire value is that the man in front of him does not get to shoot will always look worse in the chance columns than he is, and the concussion history is the reason a career this long has never included a full 82.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,258 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.2%
- 20th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.9%
- 7th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 57 for, 47 against. Expected: 45.8 and 55.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 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 41 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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 · 1258 minutes at five-on-five
- Matt Grzelcyknow PIT13%
- Mason Lohrei13%
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 45.2% — 4.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,258 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hampus Lindholm | 49.2% | 39.8% | 55.5% |
| Charlie Coyle | 42.9% | 46.4% | 49.7% |
| Brad Marchand | 45.2% | 45.3% | 53.5% |
49.2% together, 39.8% for him apart and 55.5% for Lindholm apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Lindholm and did not follow 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
119 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 57 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.