This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →

Brendan Lemieux

The most penalties taken per 60 of all 393 qualified forwards, the 2nd-most drawn, and a top speed higher than Connor McDavid’s.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2017-18	WPG	9	1	0	1	+2	21	0	0	0	6	16.7	7:56
2018-19	WPG/NYR	63	12	5	17	+6	108	0	0	1	67	17.9	9:03
2019-20	NYR	59	6	12	18	-14	111	2	1	0	86	7.0	12:52
2020-21	NYR/LAK	49	4	7	11	-2	73	0	0	1	50	8.0	10:07
2021-22	LAK	50	8	5	13	+1	97	0	0	2	65	12.3	10:45
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	230	31	29	60	-7	410	2	1	4	274	11.3	10:35

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

Eight goals and five assists in fifty games at 10:45 a night — and ninety-seven penalty minutes. Plus-1. Career: 230 games, 60 points, and 410 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

There is not much and it is not the point. 1.47 even-strength points per 60 is the 31st percentile, 7.26 shots per 60 the 49th, 12.3 per cent the 59th. Fifty-three per cent from the slot at a 24-foot median: he shoots from where a fourth-line winger shoots.

53.7 per cent of the expected goals is the 77th percentile and 56.7 per cent of the attempts the 93rd, which is genuinely good for the minutes. His ice went 23-20 against an expectation of 23.07-19.87 — almost exactly what the model asked for, which nobody else on this club managed.

The pair file has one oddity worth keeping. He is the only King who was better with Tobias Bjornfot than without — 60.0 per cent across 287 attempts against 50.6 apart. With Blake Lizotte across 698 attempts he was at 55.1, and 49.4 alone.

The Physical Game

This is the report. 3.02 penalties taken per 60 is the most of all 393 qualified forwards and 2.46 drawn is the 2nd-most. Nobody in the league was in more of them per minute in either direction, and the net — minus 0.56 per 60, the 5th percentile — says the trade goes against him.

13.62 hits per 60 is the 15th-most of 393 forwards, in 10:45 a night. Ninety-seven penalty minutes in fifty games, and a career 410 in 230: the game is built on crossing the line and daring the referee to call it.

A club that spends 4:46 a night killing penalties and finished 17th at it is paying for this in a currency it cannot afford. That is the whole argument against him, and it is a strong one.

The Intangibles

24.17 mph is the 2nd-fastest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers — behind only Denis Gurianov, and ahead of Connor McDavid’s 24.14. 12.7 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 95th percentile.

That is a fact and not a verdict, and this roster proves why: Adrian Kempe is 4th on the same list and scored thirty-five goals; Lemieux is 2nd and scored eight. A top speed measures the fastest a man ever went, not what he did while getting there.

Genuinely fast, genuinely heavy, and a net negative on special teams by his own measurements. He is 26, and the version of this player that keeps a job is the one that stops taking three penalties per sixty.

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.

agitatora strength· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“3.02 penalties taken per 60 is the most of all 393 qualified forwards and 2.46 drawn is the 2nd-most.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“13.62 hits per 60 is the 15th-most of 393 forwards, in 10:45 a night.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“Ninety-seven penalty minutes in fifty games, and a career 410 in 230: the game is built on crossing the line and daring the referee to call it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 530 minutes

Expected goals: 53.7%; 80th pct
Shot attempts: 56.7%; 95th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 23 for, 20 against. Expected: 23.1 and 19.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

48th

Numbers

80th

The numbers rank him 32 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 — 60 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 · 50 games

Top speed: 24.2 mph; 100th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.28 a game
Distance: 1.73 miles a game
Hardest shot: 87.8 mph; 53rd 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

2021-22 · 530 minutes at five-on-five

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: LAK took 52.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.7% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 530 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Blake Lizotte	55.1%	49.4%	47.7%
Arthur Kaliyev	55.5%	50.2%	57.2%
Matt Roy	50.5%	55.4%	53.5%

55.1% together, 49.4% for him apart and 47.7% for Lizotte 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

100 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.