Photo by TheAHL, CC BY-SA 4.0
Brandt Clarke
Los Angeles Kings Defense #92
A 22-year-old right-shot defenceman who already runs a power play and is still learning where to stand without the puck.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | LAK | 9 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0.0 | 13:39 |
| 2023-24 | LAK | 16 | 2 | 4 | 6 | -6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 31 | 6.5 | 13:39 |
| 2024-25 | LAK | 78 | 5 | 28 | 33 | +13 | 46 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 131 | 3.8 | 16:17 |
| 2025-26 | LAK | 82 | 8 | 32 | 40 | +11 | 63 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 5.0 | 19:48 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 185 | 15 | 66 | 81 | +17 | 125 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 332 | 4.5 | 17:29 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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
8 goals and 40 points in all 82 games, plus-11, on nearly 20 minutes a night. 40 points from a 22-year-old defenceman is a real season, and he did it while playing 74 percent of his 5-on-5 minutes with Edmundson, who was clearly there to cover for him.
The Finesse Game
The puck skills are the reason he was the eighth pick. He walks the offensive blue line as well as any young defenceman in the league, changing the angle until a lane opens rather than firing into shin pads, and the passes he makes down low from the point are the kind most defencemen do not attempt.
He is not a burner, and the skating is the part that has been questioned since junior. It is fine. He pivots cleanly, he escapes pressure with a quick first few steps, and he has not looked overwhelmed by NHL forechecks.
63 penalty minutes for a young defenceman suggests he is still occasionally reaching rather than moving his feet.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 200, and he defends with his stick more than his body. He can be beaten to the net front by a heavier forward and does not clear the crease with any authority. That will improve with strength; some of it is positional and will improve with time.
The Intangibles
The offensive instincts are unusual and they are not going away. What decides whether he becomes a number-1 defenceman is the half of the rink where he is currently being sheltered — the coverage reads in his own end are a year or two behind the rest of his game.
He is on a team with an ageing icon logging the minutes he will eventually inherit. Watching that handover is the most interesting thing about this club.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
19.2% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,368 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.3%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.2%
- 87th 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: 65 for, 44 against. Expected: 59.9 and 50.4.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe two rank him within 6 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.
Both bars are percentiles among the 656 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 62nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.22 a game
- Distance
- 2.91 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.0 mph
- 32nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
2
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 19 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1368 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, 2025-26
- The club
- LAK took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.3% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,368 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joel Edmundson | 51.8% | 61.7% | 39.3% |
| Adrian Kempe | 54.4% | 54.2% | 45.6% |
| Anze Kopitar | 54.1% | 54.4% | 47.7% |
51.8% together, 61.7% for him apart and 39.3% for Edmundson apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Edmundson behind.
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
224 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 16% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.