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 per cent at five-on-five, the 24th 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 23rd 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.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 952 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47%
- 24th 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: 27 for, 31 against. Expected: 33.7 and 38.1.
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 337 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.
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 47.0% — 1.7 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 | 47.0% | 47.0% | 48.9% |
| Yegor Sharangovich | 42.4% | 48.8% | 50.6% |
| Nazem Kadri | 46.5% | 47.1% | 50.0% |
47.0% together, 47.0% for him apart and 48.9% 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.