This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Brandon Saad
St. Louis Blues Left Wing
The 5th-percentile hit rate and the 5th-percentile penalty rate, from a 24-goal winger.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | CHI | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.0 | 14:01 |
| 2012-13 | CHI | 46 | 10 | 17 | 27 | +17 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 98 | 10.2 | 16:28 |
| 2013-14 | CHI | 78 | 19 | 28 | 47 | +20 | 20 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 11.9 | 16:17 |
| 2014-15 | CHI | 82 | 23 | 29 | 52 | +7 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 203 | 11.3 | 17:15 |
| 2015-16 | CBJ | 78 | 31 | 22 | 53 | +1 | 14 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 233 | 13.3 | 17:13 |
| 2016-17 | CBJ | 82 | 24 | 29 | 53 | +23 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 210 | 11.4 | 17:02 |
| 2017-18 | CHI | 82 | 18 | 17 | 35 | -10 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 237 | 7.6 | 17:30 |
| 2018-19 | CHI | 80 | 23 | 24 | 47 | -9 | 12 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 195 | 11.8 | 17:41 |
| 2019-20 | CHI | 58 | 21 | 12 | 33 | +2 | 16 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 140 | 15.0 | 16:45 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 44 | 15 | 9 | 24 | +1 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 68 | 22.1 | 14:06 |
| 2021-22 | STL | 78 | 24 | 25 | 49 | +11 | 10 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 158 | 15.2 | 16:16 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 710 | 208 | 212 | 420 | +63 | 130 | 29 | 7 | 39 | 1704 | 12.2 | 16:47 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
78 games, 24 goals and 25 assists at 16:16 a night, plus-11, ten penalty minutes, 158 shots. Eight of the twenty-four came on the power play and one short-handed. Forty-third overall in 2011 by Chicago — the second round — eleven seasons, 710 games, 420 points.
The Finesse Game
15.2 per cent shooting is the 83rd percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, from a 21-foot median with sixty per cent of his attempts from the slot at the 79th.
7.47 shots per 60 is the 53rd percentile and 1.86 even-strength points per 60 the 55th — ordinary rates, and twenty-four goals out of them.
2.13 takeaways per 60 is the 82nd percentile against 1.18 giveaways at the 27th.
46.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 25th percentile and 48.5 per cent of the attempts the 34th, out of 43.2 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 133rd-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — a genuinely hard chair for a scoring winger.
Beside Justin Faulk he took 53.6 per cent of the expected goals and apart from him 43.5. Beside Marco Scandella, 38.8. Which defenceman he was on the ice with moved his chance share by fifteen points, which is a larger swing than any forward pairing produced.
The Physical Game
0.95 hits per 60 is the 5th percentile among forwards and 0.95 blocks the 14th, at 6-1 and 207 pounds.
0.24 penalties taken per 60 is the 5th percentile and ten penalty minutes came out of seventy-eight games. He is one of the cleanest forwards in the league and he does not finish checks.
The Intangibles
22.2 mph is the 37th percentile and 9.40 miles per 60 the 30th, against 5.0 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 48th.
All four skating measurements are at or below the league middle, which for a winger whose reputation was built on straight-line speed is the single most useful line in this report — and the tracking is only three years old, so it cannot say when that changed.
His shot is 87.1 mph, the 29th percentile.
He is 29, with 420 points in 710 games, and this is his sixth season of twenty goals or more. Consistency, discipline and the takeaway ledger are the case. A hard chair, ordinary skating and a possession share in the bottom quarter are what a second-line winger on a 26th-ranked possession club looks like.
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
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.13 penalty minutes a game over 78, 5th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,074 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.5%
- 41st pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 47 for, 33 against. Expected: 40.4 and 45.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 27 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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, 2021-22 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 55th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.35 a game
- Distance
- 2.55 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.1 mph
- 50th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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
2021-22 · 1074 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, 2021-22
- The club
- STL took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,074 minutes at five-on-five — 72nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan O'Reilly | 48.9% | 44.6% | 49.4% |
| David Perron | 50.4% | 43.2% | 48.0% |
| Colton Parayko | 42.6% | 50.3% | 48.4% |
48.9% together, 44.6% for him apart and 49.4% for O'Reilly apart. He was worse away from O'Reilly, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than O'Reilly did.
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
198 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.