Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

13

Brandon Tanev

Utah Mammoth Left Wing

Undrafted, and 16 penalty minutes in 79 games from one of the more relentless forecheckers in the league.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16WPG30000200040.012:03
2016-17WPG51224-626001543.710:41
2017-18WPG6181018+13180317910.112:40
2018-19WPG80141529+94102012711.014:07
2019-20PIT68111425-1160249511.614:45
2020-21PIT327916+12220104316.314:26
2021-22SEA309615+4132135117.614:34
2022-23SEA82161935+214401311513.914:13
2023-24SEA667916+251000739.614:35
2024-25SEA/WPG79101222-12160009910.113:13
2025-26 so far
Career5528496180+422492101274011.313:41

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

10 goals and 12 assists in 79 games across Seattle and Winnipeg — 22 points at 13:13 a night, minus-12, on 99 shots and 16 penalty minutes.

Sixteen penalty minutes in 79 games from a player who forechecks like this is genuinely unusual and it is the reason he has been a first-unit penalty killer on four clubs.

The Finesse Game

99 attempts and 10 goals at a 10.1 per cent conversion. The shot is functional and the volume is a fourth-line number.

12 assists in 79 games. 180 points in 552 NHL games is the whole offensive record; he is on the ice to chase pucks down and to be first in.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 189 and among the most relentless forecheckers in the league. He arrives first, he finishes every check, and he does it at a speed that makes a defenceman’s decision worse than it should be.

16 penalty minutes in 79 games is remarkable for a player who plays this way. He is clean, he does not retaliate, and he is trusted a man short because of it.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, and he went to Providence College and reached the NHL at 24 — 552 games and 180 points across four organisations, with 249 penalty minutes across all of it.

He is 33 and Utah signed him in the summer. On a roster that is 30th on the penalty kill and light up front, he is two problems addressed at once.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 845 minutes

Expected goals
46.8%
23rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.6%
14th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 38 against. Expected: 30.4 and 34.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
60th
Numbers
23rd

The report ranks him 37 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 — 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with SEA · 690 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
WPG took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 5.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
845 minutes at five-on-five — 40th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Yanni Gourde53.9%42.9%52.2%
Tye Kartye48.4%46.0%59.0%
Adam Larsson49.0%45.7%45.2%

53.9% together, 42.9% for him apart and 52.2% for Gourde apart. He was worse away from Gourde, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Gourde 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

152 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.