This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Brendan Smith
Dallas Stars Defense
Seven hundred and fifty-four penalty minutes in 694 games, at thirty-five, on the second-best defensive club in the league.
| 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 | NJD | 63 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -3 | 61 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 8.3 | 16:06 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 694 | 38 | 100 | 138 | -6 | 754 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 784 | 4.9 | 16:23 |
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
Sixty-three games in New Jersey, 5 goals and 10 assists, 61 penalty minutes, 16:06 a night and minus-3. He took 47.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 846 minutes, the 37th percentile, and his ice went 40-50 against an expectation of 31.63-34.40.
Fourteen goals of scoring above expectation on a third pair in New Jersey, and a minus-3 on a club whose goaltending was 26th in the league. It is a good season and a small one.
The Finesse Game
Sixty shots at a median of 50 feet with 15 per cent from inside 20, and 5 went in — a career-best rate against 38 goals in 694 games.
One hundred career assists across thirteen seasons. He moves the puck simply and quickly and has never been asked for more, and at 35 there is no reason to start.
The Physical Game
Seven hundred and fifty-four penalty minutes in 694 games is one of the highest career rates on any roster in this edition, and almost none of it is incidental. He will fight anybody and has done for thirteen seasons.
He takes liberties with players who have taken them with teammates, and he answers for it. At 6-2 and 200 he is not the biggest man on the ice and it has never once made a difference to him.
The Intangibles
The 27th pick in 2007 out of Wisconsin, thirteen seasons and 694 games across five organisations. He is 35 and has been the man in every room who says the thing that needs saying.
Dallas has the youngest important players in the league and a blue line that avoids contact. This is what the signing is for and it is not subtle.
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
21.6% of his attempts in the slot, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
“He will fight anybody and has done for thirteen seasons.”
“He takes liberties with players who have taken them with teammates, and he answers for it.”
“He is 35 and has been the man in every room who says the thing that needs saying.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 846 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.9%
- 38th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.1%
- 36th 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: 40 for, 50 against. Expected: 31.6 and 34.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 21 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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 · 63 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.35 a game
- Distance
- 2.24 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 92.9 mph
- 58th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 NJD · 846 minutes at five-on-five
- Luke Hughes28%
- Simon Nemec15%
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
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.9% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 846 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Bahl | 50.1% | 47.0% | 50.8% |
| Luke Hughes | 42.0% | 50.1% | 53.7% |
| Jesper Bratt | 58.2% | 43.4% | 56.2% |
50.1% together, 47.0% for him apart and 50.8% for Bahl apart. He was worse away from Bahl, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Bahl 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
88 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 15% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.