This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brayden Pachal
Calgary Flames Defense
Undrafted, fifty-one penalty minutes in fifty games, and seventy-two per cent of his attempts from beyond forty feet.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | VGK | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 9:46 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 10 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 0.0 | 16:37 |
| 2023-24 | VGK/CGY | 50 | 2 | 5 | 7 | -3 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 3.9 | 14:41 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 62 | 2 | 7 | 9 | -3 | 59 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 71 | 2.8 | 14:50 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
2 goals and 5 assists in 50 games — 7 points at 14:41 a night, minus-3, on 52 shots at 3.85 per cent, and 51 penalty minutes.
45.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 678 minutes, the 26th percentile. His ice went 22-27 against an expectation of 23.22-27.39.
The Finesse Game
52 attempts at a median of 53 feet, with 72 per cent from beyond 40 and 11 per cent from inside 20, converting at 3.85 per cent. Two goals in 62 NHL games.
5 assists. He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe, and none of it is why he is on a roster.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 202. He finishes every check and he clears the front of his own net, and he plays heavier than the listing.
51 penalty minutes in 50 games and 59 in 62 for his career — better than a minute a game. He takes liberties and he will fight, and on a blue line whose top pair defends with position he is one of two men who does anything else.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Prince Albert, and 62 NHL games at 25 after four seasons in the American league.
An undrafted defenceman who reaches fifty NHL games in a season has already beaten the odds, and on a club that has just traded two of its top four he is now a genuine third-pairing option rather than a seventh man.
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
- 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.
“**Undrafted**, out of Prince Albert, and **62 NHL games at 25** after four seasons in the American league.”
“**He finishes every check and he clears the front of his own net**, and he plays heavier than the listing.”
“**He finishes every check and he clears the front of his own net**, and he plays heavier than the listing.”
“**He takes liberties and he will fight**, and on a blue line whose top pair defends with position he is one of two men who does anything else.”
“**He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe**, and none of it is why he is on a roster.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 678 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.9%
- 26th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.2%
- 23rd 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: 22 for, 27 against. Expected: 23.2 and 27.4.
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 652 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, 2023-24 · 50 games
- Top speed
- 21.4 mph
- 39th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.54 a game
- Distance
- 2.06 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.3 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 452 minutes at five-on-five
- Nikita Okhotiukoff the roster16%
- Joel Hanley11%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- CGY took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.9% — 4.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 678 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oliver Kylington | 45.0% | 46.3% | 49.7% |
| Nazem Kadri | 52.1% | 44.1% | 50.5% |
| Jonathan Huberdeau | 50.7% | 44.6% | 50.1% |
45.0% together, 46.3% for him apart and 49.7% for Kylington apart. Kylington was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
74 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.