Brandon Hagel

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

30 goals and 34 assists in 81 games — 64 points — at 18:39 a night. Plus-23, 178 shots at 16.9 per cent, seven on the power play, one shorthanded, three game-winners, 54 penalty minutes.

Thirty goals and 64 points are both career highs by a distance, in his third full season.

53.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,138 minutes, the 78th percentile, with his ice at 59-45 against an expectation of 57.18-48.96.

He started 60.4 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 91st percentile.

The Finesse Game

178 shots at a median of 19 feet, with 54 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty.

Inside twenty feet: 89 shots on goal and 18 goals — 20.22 per cent, above the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 65 shots and seven goals, 10.77 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 17 shots and three goals, 17.65 per cent.

Above the rate from close range on real volume, on the rate from the mid-slot, and a seventeen-per-cent run on seventeen long shots that is exactly the kind of number this book keeps flagging as noise.

A 16.9 per cent shooting percentage against a career 16.1 across 398 shots, which is a high rate on a short record.

245 tracked attempts, six of them slap shots, and 32 tip-ins. 84.1 mph at the 9th percentile — the softest measured shot on this roster and one of the softest of any thirty-goal scorer in this book.

That pairing is the file: he scores thirty goals with a shot in the bottom decile, from nineteen feet, by getting there first.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 186 pounds, and 2.2 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 88th percentile, at a top speed of 22.6 mph, the 68th, on 2.80 miles a game at the 68th.

He sprints far more often than most forwards and is quick rather than fast, which is the tracking signature of a forechecker who is repeatedly first to a loose puck.

54 penalty minutes in 81 games and 96 in 211 career games. He forechecks into contact and finishes checks at 186 pounds, which is where a fair share of those minutes come from and is the reason a sixth-round pick plays on the first line.

He kills penalties and has two career shorthanded goals from the same pressure.

The Intangibles

A hundred and fifty-ninth overall in 2016, the sixth round, four seasons, 211 games, 132 points across Chicago and Tampa Bay.

64 goals in 211 games at a 16.1 per cent career rate. He was traded for two first-round picks at twenty-three, which is a striking price for a player with 21 goals to his name at the time.

He is twenty-five, on the first line of a club that has won two championships, and the season above is the first that justifies the price.

What this book can say is that the shot chart is his own and the shooting percentage is the risk: 16.1 per cent across 398 career shots is a small enough sample that a 12 per cent season is entirely available.