Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

38

Brandon Hagel

Tampa Bay Lightning Left Wing

90 points, a plus-33 and the 95th percentile of chances from a sixth-round pick who came here for two firsts.

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
2024-25TBL82355590+335803422815.320:45
2025-26 so far
Career375125172297+322331351581015.418:06

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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 55 assists in 82 games — 90 points, at 20:45 a night, plus-33, with 3 shorthanded goals, 4 game-winners, 58 penalty minutes and 228 shots. No power-play goals at all.

56.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 95th percentile. His ice went 51-38 against an expectation of 55.55-42.99 — five fewer conceded than the chances predicted, on the best two-way line in this chapter.

The Finesse Game

228 attempts at a median of 25 feet with 40 per cent from inside 20, converting at 15.4 per cent. He shoots from where goals are scored and he arrives there without the puck.

55 assists and 90 points without a single power-play goal is a rare line and it says everything about how he produces: at even strength, off the forecheck, on a line that is winning the puck back.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 186 and he plays a great deal heavier. He is first in on the forecheck, he finishes every check, and he is genuinely unpleasant to line up against.

58 penalty minutes in 82 games is a high rate for a 90-point winger and a share of it is the second penalty in a sequence. He answers things and he does not back out of anything.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2016 — 159th overall — by Buffalo, who never signed him. He reached the NHL at 22 with Chicago, and Tampa Bay traded two first-round picks for him in 2022.

375 games and 297 points. He is 27, he signed an eight-year extension in 2024, and he was on the Canadian team at the Four Nations.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,224 minutes

Expected goals
56.4%
95th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.4%
86th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 38 against. Expected: 55.5 and 43.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
99th
Numbers
95th

The two rank him within 4 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 86 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

2024-25 · 1224 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, 2024-25

The club
TBL took 50.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.4% — 5.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,224 minutes at five-on-five — 87th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Anthony Cirelli58.1%49.2%49.9%
Ryan McDonagh53.1%59.7%51.1%
Erik Cernak51.4%60.2%51.1%

58.1% together, 49.2% for him apart and 49.9% for Cirelli apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

316 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 33 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.