This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brayden McNabb
Vegas Golden Knights Defense
The most blocks per 60 of 202 defencemen and the fewest sprints of 192, out of the hardest chair on the club.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | BUF | 25 | 1 | 7 | 8 | -1 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 4.3 | 17:50 |
| 2013-14 | BUF | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0 | 17:14 |
| 2014-15 | LAK | 71 | 2 | 22 | 24 | +11 | 52 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 74 | 2.7 | 15:54 |
| 2015-16 | LAK | 81 | 2 | 12 | 14 | +11 | 92 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 91 | 2.2 | 18:49 |
| 2016-17 | LAK | 49 | 2 | 2 | 4 | +1 | 54 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 4.3 | 15:04 |
| 2017-18 | VGK | 76 | 5 | 10 | 15 | +26 | 52 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 5.7 | 20:09 |
| 2018-19 | VGK | 81 | 4 | 12 | 16 | +11 | 52 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 84 | 4.8 | 19:29 |
| 2019-20 | VGK | 71 | 2 | 7 | 9 | +1 | 40 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 73 | 2.7 | 20:01 |
| 2020-21 | VGK | 41 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +10 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 5.1 | 19:18 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 69 | 3 | 15 | 18 | +10 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 3.5 | 19:42 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 576 | 23 | 93 | 116 | +81 | 421 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 614 | 3.8 | 18:37 |
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
69 games, 3 goals and 15 assists at 19:42 a night, plus-10, forty-two penalty minutes, 85 shots. Sixty-sixth overall in 2009 by Buffalo — the third round — ten seasons, 576 games, 116 points.
The Finesse Game
Three goals from eighty-five shots is 3.5 per cent, and 3.75 shots per 60 is the 34th percentile from a 52-foot median with five per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet.
0.87 even-strength points per 60 is the 39th percentile and none of his eighteen points came on the power play, off two seconds a night with the man advantage. He has one power-play goal in 576 career games.
1.633 takeaways per 60 is the 91st percentile, which is the one attacking number in the file and is really a defensive one.
50.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 57th percentile and 50.7 per cent of the attempts the 60th — out of 43.2 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 132nd-lowest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts, and the hardest chair on this roster by fifty places.
His ice went 49-47 against an expectation of 49.98-48.29. Level at both ends of a ledger nobody else on the club was asked to carry.
The Physical Game
7.901 blocks per 60 is the most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, ahead of Calvin de Haan at 7.890 and Connor Murphy at 7.255.
2:38 a night short-handed is the 86th percentile among defencemen, out of 43.2 per cent offensive-zone starts.
6.80 hits per 60 is the 83rd percentile at 6-4 and 215 pounds, and 421 penalty minutes across 576 career games.
The Intangibles
0.088 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the fewest of all 192 tracked defencemen. 20.4 mph is the 2nd-slowest top speed of the same 192, behind Dante Fabbro by two hundredths of a mile an hour.
Read those together and they say the same thing twice: this man does not sprint, and the top end he has been recorded at is nearly the lowest in the league. 8.18 miles per 60 is the 20th percentile, so he does not make it up in volume either.
He is 31, a third-round pick, with 116 points in 576 games and five Vegas seasons. A defenceman who cannot skate and blocks more shots than anybody in the league is not a contradiction — it is a job description, and the zone starts prove the club knows exactly what it is. It is also a job that gets harder every year, and the tracking says the legs are already gone.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“7.901 blocks per 60 is the most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, ahead of Calvin de Haan at 7.890 and Connor Murphy at 7.255.”
“2:38 a night short-handed is the 86th percentile among defencemen, out of 43.2 per cent offensive-zone starts.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,156 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.9%
- 62nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.7%
- 62nd 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: 49 for, 47 against. Expected: 50.0 and 48.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 9 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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 · 69 games
- Top speed
- 20.4 mph
- 13th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.03 a game
- Distance
- 2.68 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.9 mph
- 54th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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 · 1156 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
- VGK took 52.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,156 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shea Theodore | 49.2% | 52.4% | 54.6% |
| Evgenii Dadonov | 55.5% | 49.1% | 52.1% |
| Chandler Stephenson | 43.5% | 53.6% | 53.2% |
49.2% together, 52.4% for him apart and 54.6% for Theodore 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
127 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.