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

Brandon Hagel

A sixth-round pick with 75 points and 79 penalty minutes.

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

2019-20	CHI	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0.0	11:48
2020-21	CHI	52	9	15	24	-7	11	0	0	2	91	9.9	13:59
2021-22	CHI/TBL	77	25	19	44	-18	31	4	1	3	125	20.0	16:21
2022-23	TBL	81	30	34	64	+23	54	7	1	3	178	16.9	18:39
2023-24	TBL	82	26	49	75	+1	79	2	0	3	184	14.1	19:15
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	293	90	117	207	-1	175	13	2	11	582	15.5	17:22

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

82 games, 26 goals and 49 assists for 75 points, 2 on the power play, 79 penalty minutes, 19:15 a night and plus-1, with 3 game-winners. He took 55.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,260 minutes, the 87th percentile, and his ice went 66-67 against an expectation of 59.12-48.05.

Seven goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and nineteen more conceded than they called for. He took the second-best chance share on the club and finished plus-1, which is the whole season in one line.

The Finesse Game

258 attempts at a median of 23 feet with 42 per cent of them from inside twenty and 12 per cent from beyond forty, 184 of those on goal, converted at 14.1 per cent against a career 15.46 across 582 shots.

Ninety career goals and 117 assists in 293 games. Seventy-five points from a man taken 159th overall is the best value on this roster; he forechecks the puck loose himself and then makes the play, which is a rare pair of skills in one winger.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 186 and took 79 penalty minutes.

175 career penalty minutes in 293 games. He finishes checks on men fifty pounds heavier and talks the whole time, and a good share of those minutes come from being the second man into a scrum rather than the first.

The Intangibles

One hundred and fifty-ninth overall in 2016 by Buffalo, five seasons, and Tampa Bay is his second organisation.

A career minus-1 in 293 games and 2 shorthanded goals. He was a sixth-round pick who has scored 90 goals in the league, which almost nobody taken that late does.

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

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
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
55.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.0, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
15:22 a game at five-on-five, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“Seventy-five points from a man taken 159th overall is the best value on this roster; he forechecks the puck loose himself and then makes the play, which is a rare pair of skills in one winger.”
agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He finishes checks on men fifty pounds heavier and talks the whole time, and a good share of those minutes come from being the second man into a scrum rather than the first.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,260 minutes

Expected goals: 55.2%; 89th pct
Shot attempts: 53.4%; 81st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 66 for, 67 against. Expected: 59.1 and 48.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

97th

Numbers

89th

The two rank him within 8 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 82 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 86th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.91 a game
Distance: 2.97 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.0 mph; 64th 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

2023-24 · 1260 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: TBL took 50.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.2% — 4.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,260 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Anthony Cirelli	54.0%	56.3%	50.0%
Victor Hedman	54.8%	55.4%	51.2%
Nikita Kucherov	61.0%	51.6%	51.4%

54.0% together, 56.3% for him apart and 50.0% for Cirelli apart. Cirelli was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Cirelli 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

258 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.