This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Brendan Smith
New Jersey Devils Defense
The best chance share of any Devils defenceman, no goals in sixty games, and twelve goals fewer than his ice deserved.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | DET | 14 | 1 | 6 | 7 | +3 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 7.7 | 15:38 |
| 2012-13 | DET | 34 | 0 | 8 | 8 | +1 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 0.0 | 18:24 |
| 2013-14 | DET | 71 | 5 | 14 | 19 | -2 | 68 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 5.6 | 18:23 |
| 2014-15 | DET | 76 | 4 | 9 | 13 | -2 | 68 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 88 | 4.5 | 17:53 |
| 2015-16 | DET | 63 | 3 | 12 | 15 | +1 | 62 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 3.7 | 17:36 |
| 2016-17 | DET/NYR | 51 | 3 | 6 | 9 | +1 | 63 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 62 | 4.8 | 19:14 |
| 2017-18 | NYR | 44 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +2 | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 1.5 | 17:10 |
| 2018-19 | NYR | 63 | 4 | 9 | 13 | -7 | 71 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 6.1 | 15:18 |
| 2019-20 | NYR | 62 | 3 | 5 | 8 | -12 | 71 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 45 | 6.7 | 11:06 |
| 2020-21 | NYR | 48 | 5 | 5 | 10 | +3 | 73 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 8.6 | 16:26 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 45 | 4 | 4 | 8 | +6 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 63 | 6.3 | 13:55 |
| 2022-23 | NJD | 60 | 0 | 5 | 5 | +3 | 63 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 0.0 | 15:33 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 631 | 33 | 90 | 123 | -3 | 693 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 724 | 4.6 | 16:25 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
No goals and 5 assists in 60 games — at 15:33 a night. Plus-3, 58 shots, 63 penalty minutes.
56.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 92nd percentile — the best chance share of any defenceman on this club — and his ice finished 29-31.
Read that twice. The expectation on his ice was 41.04 goals for and 31.69 against. The goals against arrived exactly on schedule and the goals for came up twelve short. A defenceman with the best chance share on the blue line finished with a negative goal differential, and no part of that is defensive.
It is also the club’s whole season in one man: New Jersey led the league in expected goals per sixty at even strength and finished twenty-fifth in finishing.
Twelve seasons, 631 games, 123 points, 693 penalty minutes.
The Finesse Game
58 shots at a median of 50 feet, 62 per cent from beyond forty, and not one goal.
Beyond forty: 31 shots on goal, no goals. Twenty to forty: 13, none. Inside twenty: 11, none. Fifty-five shots on goal across a season and nothing behind a goaltender.
31 slap shots and 30 wrist out of 82 tracked attempts — a nearly even split, which for a defenceman in this era is a high slap share. 92.7 mph at the 64th percentile.
There is no passing read either: five assists last season and 90 in 631 career games. What he is paid for happens in the other end.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 200, with 63 penalty minutes in sixty games and 693 in his career.
Top speed 22.7 mph, the 75th percentile; 0.3 bursts a game, the 8th; 2.15 miles a game, the 22nd. A respectable top end he almost never uses, on very low mileage, which is a third-pair defenceman’s tracking line.
He is a punishing defenceman who plays the body every time it is available, and the penalty minutes are the price of it rather than an accident. He clears his net front and he fights.
At thirty-four the reach and the willingness are what is left, and both are still there.
The Intangibles
Twenty-seventh overall in 2007 to Detroit, and Detroit, the Rangers, Carolina and New Jersey since.
Sixteen years from draft to this season, 631 games, and a career line of 33 goals and 90 assists that has never been the point.
He is the seventh defenceman on a contender and that is the correct use of him. The chance share says the minutes are not a problem; the goal total says nobody should expect anything from them.
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
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
24.1% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“He is a punishing defenceman who plays the body every time it is available, and the penalty minutes are the price of it rather than an accident.”
“He clears his net front and he fights.”
“At thirty-four the reach and the willingness are what is left, and both are still there.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 833 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.4%
- 92nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.3%
- 87th 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: 29 for, 31 against. Expected: 41.0 and 31.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 75 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 60 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 89th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.25 a game
- Distance
- 2.15 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.7 mph
- 55th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 833 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, 2022-23
- The club
- NJD took 56.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.4% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 833 minutes at five-on-five — 42nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damon Severson | 61.0% | 51.3% | 59.2% |
| Jack Hughes | 59.9% | 54.8% | 57.3% |
| Erik Haula | 57.9% | 55.8% | 56.0% |
61.0% together, 51.3% for him apart and 59.2% for Severson apart. He was worse away from Severson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Severson did.
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
79 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 0 of them goals. 15% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.