This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brayden Pachal
Calgary Flames Defense
88 penalty minutes, a 47 per cent chance share, and a third-pair right shot playing 14 minutes.
| 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 | CGY | 76 | 3 | 9 | 12 | +5 | 88 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 61 | 4.9 | 14:14 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 138 | 5 | 16 | 21 | +2 | 147 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 132 | 3.8 | 14:30 |
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
3 goals and 9 assists in 76 games for 12 points, plus-5, on 14:14 a night with 88 penalty minutes — the most on the club.
47.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 29th percentile, over 952 minutes. 81 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet and 8 per cent from inside 20.
The Finesse Game
Very little. 61 shots in 76 games and 3 goals, and a first pass that goes to the boards more often than to a forward.
9 assists is the honest measure. He is not asked to make plays and does not attempt them.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 202, and he plays right at the edge of what the league allows. He hits, he fights, and he defends his net front with real intent.
88 penalty minutes in 14 minutes a night is a very high rate. On a club that finished 24th on the penalty kill and missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker, that is not a neutral fact.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, four American League seasons, and an NHL job at 25 built on being willing.
The projection is a third-pair defenceman who plays 70 games and takes 80 penalty minutes. Whether that is worth a roster spot is a question a club two points out of a playoff place ought to ask.
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“6-2 and 202, and he plays right at the edge of what the league allows.”
“He hits, he fights, and he defends his net front with real intent.”
“He hits, he fights, and he defends his net front with real intent.”
“He is not asked to make plays and does not attempt them.”
“Undrafted, four American League seasons, and an NHL job at 25 built on being willing.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 952 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.4%
- 30th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 54th 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: 32 for, 28 against. Expected: 34.1 and 37.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.29 a game
- Distance
- 1.97 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.4 mph
- 31st 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 89.7
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 · 952 minutes at five-on-five
- Jake Bean59%
- Tyson Barrieoff the roster13%
- Joel Hanley10%
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
- CGY took 48.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.4% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 952 minutes at five-on-five — 54th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jake Bean | 48.1% | 46.4% | 49.0% |
| Yegor Sharangovich | 43.5% | 49.0% | 49.9% |
| Nazem Kadri | 47.8% | 47.3% | 48.9% |
48.1% together, 46.4% for him apart and 49.0% for Bean apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
102 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.