Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

62

Brandon Montour

Seattle Kraken Defense

18 goals and 231 shots from the blue line, 70 penalty minutes, and a minus-22 in the first year of a seven-year contract.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17ANA27246+1114000504.017:23
2017-18ANA8092332+16425151605.620:28
2018-19ANA/BUF8282735-20561021814.422:27
2019-20BUF5451318+1328000865.819:30
2020-21BUF/FLA5071118-540020947.420:29
2021-22FLA81112637+15481011537.217:54
2022-23FLA80165773+91073052426.624:08
2023-24FLA6682533+1461031684.823:27
2024-25SEA81182341-22705042317.822:59
2025-26 so far
Career60184209293+184511632013656.221:19

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

18 goals and 23 assists in 81 games — 41 points at 22:59 a night, with 231 shots, the most of any defenceman in this chapter, 4 game-winners and 70 penalty minutes. Minus-22, the worst on the club.

48.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 34th percentile, across 1,500 minutes. His ice went 62-59 against an expectation of 56.77-60.81 — five goals better than expected for and two fewer against, which is a good defensive season sitting underneath a minus-22.

The Finesse Game

231 attempts at a median of 48 feet with 64 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 7.8 per cent for 18 goals — more than any defenceman here by seven. The shot is genuinely heavy and he gets it through.

23 assists. He joins the rush and he is a threat off the blue line rather than a distributor, which is an unusual profile for a defenceman playing twenty-three minutes.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 199 and he plays with an edge. He finishes checks, he goes into the scrum after the whistle, and he is genuinely irritating.

70 penalty minutes in 81 games is the highest total on the club and a high rate for a top-pair defenceman. A share of it is retaliation and a share of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step at the blue line.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2014 and 601 games and 293 points, including a Stanley Cup with Florida in 2024 and a 16-goal, 73-point season the year before that.

He is 31 and signed a seven-year contract with Seattle in the summer of 2024. The first year of it was 41 points and a minus-22.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,500 minutes

Expected goals
48.3%
34th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.5%
37th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 62 for, 59 against. Expected: 56.8 and 60.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
34th

The report ranks him 42 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 77 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 · 1500 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
SEA took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.3% — 1.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,500 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jamie Oleksiak47.1%49.8%44.2%
Matty Beniers51.0%47.0%46.6%
Jaden Schwartz50.4%47.3%45.6%

47.1% together, 49.8% for him apart and 44.2% for Oleksiak apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

359 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.