This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Brendan Gaunce

Twenty-sixth overall in 2012, and 28 points in 177 games across eight seasons.

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	CBJ	5	0	1	1	-1	2	0	0	0	9	0.0	10:28
2023-24	CBJ	24	2	2	4	-7	6	0	0	0	24	8.3	11:45
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	177	13	15	28	-13	67	1	0	2	219	5.9	10:43

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

24 games in Columbus, 2 goals and 2 assists for 4 points, 6 penalty minutes, 11:45 a night and minus-7. He took 45.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 270 minutes, the 23rd percentile, and his ice went 6-12 against an expectation of 9.43-11.32, all of it with the Blue Jackets.

Three goals of scoring that did not arrive and one more conceded than the chances called for. Twenty-four games in a season is what the last six years have looked like.

The Finesse Game

24 shots in 24 games at a median of 26 feet, converted at 8.3 per cent against a career 5.94.

Fifteen career assists in 177 games. Thirteen goals in eight seasons is the whole record, and a first-round pick was drafted for a good deal more than that.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 222 and hard to move from in front of a net.

67 career penalty minutes in 177 games is a low rate for a man of that size. He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and he does not go looking for anybody.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2012 out of Sudbury, eight seasons across three organisations, and 28 points in 177 games.

He is 30 and has never played eighty games in a season. This is organisational depth signed to be recalled, and the club has been short enough of forwards to need it.

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.

hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-2 and 222 and hard to move from in front of a net.”
forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and he does not go looking for anybody.”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and he does not go looking for anybody.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He forechecks hard and wins the wall, and he does not go looking for anybody.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 270 minutes

Expected goals: 45.4%; 24th pct
Shot attempts: 46.8%; 26th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 6 for, 12 against. Expected: 9.4 and 11.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

11th

Numbers

24th

The 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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 · 24 games

Top speed: 21.3 mph; 16th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.88 a game
Distance: 1.88 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.4 mph; 47th 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

2023-24 with CBJ · 270 minutes at five-on-five

Mathieu Olivier47%
Carson Meyeroff the roster33%
Alexandre Texiernow STL28%

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: CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: 270 minutes at five-on-five — 4th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Mathieu Olivier	42.7%	47.4%	45.2%
Erik Gudbranson	53.0%	41.1%	42.5%
Damon Severson	51.9%	41.8%	48.1%

42.7% together, 47.4% for him apart and 45.2% for Olivier apart. He was better away from Olivier, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Olivier.

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

40 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.