This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brendan Gaunce
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
Thirty games, eight minutes a night, and five goals from a first-round pick a decade past the draft.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | VAN | 20 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -9 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 2.9 | 12:46 |
| 2016-17 | VAN | 57 | 0 | 5 | 5 | -2 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 51 | 0.0 | 9:29 |
| 2017-18 | VAN | 37 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 55 | 7.3 | 13:19 |
| 2018-19 | VAN | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | +3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 50.0 | 7:37 |
| 2019-20 | BOS | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 9:10 |
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 30 | 5 | 2 | 7 | +2 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 11.4 | 8:06 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 148 | 11 | 12 | 23 | -5 | 59 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 186 | 5.9 | 10:34 |
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
5 goals and 2 assists in 30 games — 7 points at 8:06 a night, plus-2, with 12 penalty minutes.
50.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 240 minutes. His ice went 11-9 against an expectation of 9.99-9.67, which on a club that was outchanced by nearly everybody is the highest five-on-five share of any forward who dressed for Columbus — over 240 minutes, which is not enough to mean it.
Two hundred and forty minutes is well below the 500 this book requires before it will rank a player, so no percentiles are quoted here.
The Finesse Game
Forty-four shots at 11.4 per cent, on a median distance of 27 feet with 34 per cent from the slot. Five goals is one more than he had scored in the previous five seasons combined.
Eight minutes a night is the least of any Blue Jacket forward who dressed thirty times. He started 52.8 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end and spent 38.3 per cent of his even-strength time there — a fourth line given the friendly draw and pushed out of the zone anyway.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 222. He is heavy, he finishes his check, and at eight minutes a night that is the sum of what the club is buying.
1.32 miles a game is the lowest figure printed for any Blue Jacket, which is a shift-count artefact as much as a description: eight minutes in the defensive third does not cover ground.
The Intangibles
Twenty-sixth overall in 2012 by Vancouver, and 148 NHL games across four clubs with 23 points in ten years.
He is 28. Nothing on this page argues he should be in the lineup; what it argues is that on a team that gave up the most expected goals in the league, the thirteenth forward has to be able to take a defensive-zone shift.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 240 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.8%
- 61st pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.8%
- 83rd 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: 11 for, 9 against. Expected: 10.0 and 9.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 48 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 52 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 · 30 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 59th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.53 a game
- Distance
- 1.32 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.8 mph
- 65th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 240 minutes at five-on-five
- Carson Meyer31%
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
- CBJ took 44.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.8% — 6.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 240 minutes at five-on-five — 4th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Peeke | 54.6% | 49.0% | 43.1% |
| Vladislav Gavrikov | 50.1% | 51.2% | 45.2% |
| Adam Boqvist | 49.7% | 51.3% | 45.4% |
54.6% together, 49.0% for him apart and 43.1% for Peeke apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
62 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.