Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

38

Brandon Hagel

Tampa Bay Lightning Left Wing

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

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20CHI10000000040.011:48
2020-21CHI5291524-711002919.913:59
2021-22CHI/TBL77251944-183141312520.016:21
2022-23TBL81303464+235471317816.918:39
2023-24TBL82264975+17920318414.119:15
2024-25 so far
Career29390117207-11751321158215.517:22

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.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,260 minutes

Expected goals
55.2%
89th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.4%
81st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

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.

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

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Anthony Cirelli54.0%56.3%50.0%
Victor Hedman54.8%55.4%51.2%
Nikita Kucherov61.0%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.