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

Brayden McNabb

Plus-42 in 82 games at 34, second only to one man in the league.

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	VGK	82	1	16	17	+17	51	0	0	0	89	1.1	19:51
2023-24	VGK	82	4	22	26	+18	37	0	0	0	86	4.7	19:21
2024-25	VGK	82	5	15	20	+42	32	0	1	0	97	5.1	20:07
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	822	33	146	179	+158	541	1	2	4	886	3.7	18:58

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 15 assists in 82 games — 20 points at 20:07 a night, plus-42, the second-best figure in the league, with a shorthanded goal and 32 penalty minutes.

54.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 90th percentile, across 1,395 minutes. His ice went 64-40 against an expectation of 57.23-47.53 — ten goals better than expected for and two worse against.

The Finesse Game

97 attempts in 82 games at a median of 56 feet with 78 per cent from beyond 40 and 3 per cent from inside 20, and 5 goals. 33 goals in 822 career games. He does not shoot.

15 assists. The first pass is short, early and correct, and he does not attempt anything that becomes a rush the other way. The whole puck game is designed to lose nothing.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 215 and among the heaviest hitters in the league. He clears the front of his own net by force, he finishes checks that hurt, and he blocks shots.

32 penalty minutes in 82 games at twenty minutes a night is a genuinely low rate for a defenceman who plays this way, and it is why the club spends less time shorthanded than anybody.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2009 and 822 games and 179 points, eight seasons of it here since the expansion draft, with a Stanley Cup.

He is 34 and played all 82 games. Nobody has played more games for this franchise.

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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“**6-4 and 215 and among the heaviest hitters in the league.** He clears the front of his own net by force, he finishes checks that hurt, and he blocks shots.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He clears the front of his own net by force, he finishes checks that hurt, and he blocks shots.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He clears the front of his own net by force, he finishes checks that hurt, and he blocks shots.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**32 penalty minutes in 82 games at twenty minutes a night** is a genuinely low rate for a defenceman who plays this way, and it is why the club spends less time shorthanded than anybody.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is short, early and correct, and he does not attempt anything that becomes a rush the other way.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,395 minutes

Expected goals: 54.6%; 88th pct
Shot attempts: 51.6%; 70th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 64 for, 40 against. Expected: 57.2 and 47.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

49th

Numbers

88th

The numbers rank him 39 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 — 72 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 20.3 mph; 10th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.01 a game
Distance: 2.68 miles a game
Hardest shot: 90.3 mph; 45th 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 · 1395 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 54.6% — 1.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,395 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Shea Theodore	53.3%	56.9%	55.3%
Jack Eichel	58.6%	52.4%	52.7%
Ivan Barbashev	54.1%	54.9%	53.6%

53.3% together, 56.9% for him apart and 55.3% for Theodore apart. He was better away from Theodore, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Theodore.

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

146 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.