Brandon Saad

Two Stanley Cups, 935 games, and 30 points across two clubs at 32.

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	STL	71	19	18	37	-8	12	2	2	1	127	15.0	16:39
2023-24	STL	82	26	16	42	-4	20	5	0	7	144	18.1	15:30
2024-25	STL/VGK	72	13	17	30	-8	6	0	0	1	127	10.2	14:49
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	935	266	263	529	+43	168	36	9	48	2102	12.7	16:31

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

13 goals and 17 assists in 72 games across St. Louis and Vegas — 30 points at 14:49 a night, minus-8, on 127 shots and 6 penalty minutes.

52.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 87th percentile. His ice went 39-43 against an expectation of 38.37-34.29 — four goals of scoring missing and two fewer conceded.

The Finesse Game

127 attempts at a median of 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20, converting at 10.2 per cent. He goes to the paint and the finishing has fallen away — he scored 26 goals in 2021-22 and has scored 13 in each of the last two seasons.

17 assists in 72 games. He was never a creator; the value has always been the straight-line speed and the willingness to use it into the hard areas.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 207 and he plays honestly. He forechecks properly and he wins some pucks below the goal line, and he does not initiate much contact.

6 penalty minutes in 72 games is among the lowest totals of any regular in this edition. He does not foul and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2011 and 935 games and 529 points across five organisations, with two Stanley Cups in Chicago before he was 23.

He is 33. He was bought out in St. Louis and claimed by Vegas in November, which for a player with this record is an unusual way to arrive.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 72, 2nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He goes to the paint and the finishing has fallen away — he scored 26 goals in 2021-22 and has scored 13 in each of the last two seasons.”
forechecks-aggressivelypresent and ordinary· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks properly and he wins some pucks below the goal line, and he does not initiate much contact.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**6 penalty minutes in 72 games** is among the lowest totals of any regular in this edition. He does not foul and he does not retaliate.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not foul and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 914 minutes

Expected goals: 52.8%; 76th pct
Shot attempts: 51%; 64th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 43 against. Expected: 38.4 and 34.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

76th

The two rank him within 16 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 — 74 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, 2024-25 · 72 games

Top speed: 22.3 mph; 49th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.71 a game
Distance: 2.38 miles a game
Hardest shot: 79.5 mph; 18th 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

2024-25 with STL · 554 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: VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.8% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: 914 minutes at five-on-five — 48th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Colton Parayko	47.1%	54.7%	51.9%
Ryan Suter	49.6%	54.0%	47.8%
Pavel Dorofeyev	60.3%	50.2%	56.6%

47.1% together, 54.7% for him apart and 51.9% for Parayko apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

172 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.