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

Brandt Clarke

33 points at 22 and on-ice goals of 54-41, and the most promising defenceman this organisation has had in a decade.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	103	7	34	41	+6	62	2	0	1	173	4.0	15:39

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

5 goals and 28 assists in 78 games for 33 points, plus-13, on 16:17 a night.

54.2 per cent at five-on-five, the 87th percentile, with on-ice goals of 54-41 against an expected 47.5-40.1 — seven goals of finishing above expectation, which is a good deal of why the plus-13 looks as it does.

The Finesse Game

The puck game is genuinely special. He walks the line, sees the seam pass, and delivers it through traffic rather than around it — 28 assists at 22 in third-pair minutes is an unusual total, and the ceiling is higher than what he was given.

131 shots and 5 goals; the release is ordinary and 64 per cent of his attempts come from beyond 40 feet. He is a distributor rather than a shooter and the power-play instincts are the best on the roster.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 200, and he does not defend by force. He is beaten in board battles by stronger forwards and does not clear a net front, and the defensive reads are still a year or two behind the offensive ones.

46 penalty minutes over 78 games is a high rate for a young defenceman in sixteen minutes a night and it is the tell.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, a long apprenticeship, and a season in which the club used him carefully and he outproduced the usage.

At 22 he is the most important defenceman in the organisation. On a team whose identity is defending, the question is whether a coach who values structure above everything will give him the minutes his offence deserves.

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
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.

durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He walks the line, sees the seam pass, and delivers it through traffic rather than around it”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He is beaten in board battles by stronger forwards”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“does not clear a net front”
defensively-responsiblehe lacks it· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“the defensive reads are still a year or two behind the offensive ones”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“46 penalty minutes over 78 games is a high rate for a young defenceman in sixteen minutes a night and it is the tell.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,061 minutes

Expected goals: 54.2%; 87th pct
Shot attempts: 53.8%; 87th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 41 against. Expected: 47.5 and 40.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

66th

Numbers

87th

The numbers rank him 21 points above where the report does. 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 — 75 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 · 78 games

Top speed: 21.2 mph; 31st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.41 a game
Distance: 2.45 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.2 mph; 16th 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 · 1061 minutes at five-on-five

Joel Edmundson69%
Jacob Moverare9%

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: LAK took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.2% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,061 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Joel Edmundson	51.7%	59.3%	46.2%
Kevin Fiala	54.1%	54.3%	59.3%
Anze Kopitar	56.4%	53.2%	47.5%

51.7% together, 59.3% for him apart and 46.2% 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

170 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 52 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 64% from beyond forty.