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

Brenden Dillon

Undrafted, 892 games, 858 penalty minutes, and plus-20 in Winnipeg at 33.

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

2011-12	DAL	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	0.0	19:59
2012-13	DAL	48	3	5	8	+1	65	0	0	1	75	4.0	21:23
2013-14	DAL	80	6	11	17	+9	86	0	2	1	97	6.2	21:06
2014-15	DAL/SJS	80	2	8	10	-13	77	0	1	1	91	2.2	19:34
2015-16	SJS	76	2	9	11	+8	61	0	0	1	93	2.1	16:41
2016-17	SJS	81	2	8	10	-2	60	0	0	0	86	2.3	16:28
2017-18	SJS	81	5	17	22	-7	60	0	0	0	88	5.7	17:19
2018-19	SJS	82	1	21	22	+19	61	0	1	0	71	1.4	17:45
2019-20	SJS/WSH	69	1	13	14	-2	104	0	0	0	58	1.7	19:28
2020-21	WSH	56	2	17	19	+15	49	0	0	0	51	3.9	18:57
2021-22	WPG	79	3	17	20	+16	67	0	0	0	85	3.5	18:50
2022-23	WPG	82	2	21	23	+2	76	0	0	0	83	2.4	19:35
2023-24	WPG	77	8	12	20	+20	92	0	0	2	79	10.1	18:44
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	892	37	159	196	+66	858	0	4	6	963	3.8	18:43

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

77 games in Winnipeg, 8 goals and 12 assists for 20 points, 92 penalty minutes, 18:44 a night and plus-20. He took 50.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,231 minutes, the 53rd percentile, and his ice went 53-42 against an expectation of 49.04-49.13, all of it with the Jets.

Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and seven fewer conceded than they called for. Winnipeg had the best goaltending in the league last season and the plus-20 should be read with that in front of it.

The Finesse Game

79 shots at a median of 58 feet with 86 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 10.1 per cent against a career 3.84.

159 career assists in 892 games and 37 goals. Eight goals is a career high by two and it came from putting the puck at the net from the blue line more often than usual. There is no puck-carrying at all.

The Physical Game

He hits as hard as anybody in the league at 6-4 and 225, and 858 career penalty minutes in 892 games is what thirteen seasons of it costs.

He will fight anybody, clears the crease, and cannot be moved from in front of his own net. He blocks shots, kills penalties, and has 4 career shorthanded goals.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of New Westminster, thirteen seasons across five organisations, and 196 points in 892 games at a career plus-66.

He is 33 and has played almost nine hundred games without ever being drafted. On a club that lost sixteen goals to its crease and had two twenty-year-olds on its top four, this is exactly the signing to make.

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
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
85.7% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
6 of 102 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.9%, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He hits as hard as anybody in the league at 6-4 and 225, and 858 career penalty minutes in 892 games is what thirteen seasons of it costs.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“He will fight anybody, clears the crease, and cannot be moved from in front of his own net.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He will fight anybody, clears the crease, and cannot be moved from in front of his own net.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He will fight anybody, clears the crease, and cannot be moved from in front of his own net.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots, kills penalties, and has 4 career shorthanded goals.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He blocks shots, kills penalties, and has 4 career shorthanded goals.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“There is no puck-carrying at all.”
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, out of New Westminster, thirteen seasons across five organisations, and 196 points in 892 games at a career plus-66.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,231 minutes

Expected goals: 50%; 53rd pct
Shot attempts: 49.2%; 49th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 42 against. Expected: 49.0 and 49.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

31st

Numbers

53rd

The numbers rank him 22 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 — 65 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 · 77 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 38th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.36 a game
Distance: 2.56 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.1 mph; 45th 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 WPG · 1231 minutes at five-on-five

Neal Pionk75%
Dylan DeMelo10%

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: WPG took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.0% — 2.0 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,231 minutes at five-on-five — 85th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Neal Pionk	46.8%	58.2%	53.8%
Mason Appleton	49.4%	50.2%	52.1%
Adam Lowry	53.6%	48.4%	55.5%

46.8% together, 58.2% for him apart and 53.8% for Pionk apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

119 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 60 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 86% from beyond forty.