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

Brent Burns

One thousand four hundred and fifteen games, thirty-three assists at thirty-nine, and all eighty-two of them.

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

2003-04	MIN	36	1	5	6	-10	12	0	0	0	34	2.9	13:29
2005-06	MIN	72	4	12	16	-7	32	1	0	1	73	5.5	14:07
2006-07	MIN	77	7	18	25	+16	26	3	0	3	108	6.5	15:48
2007-08	MIN	82	15	28	43	+12	80	8	0	4	158	9.5	23:06
2008-09	MIN	59	8	19	27	-7	45	4	0	2	147	5.4	22:25
2009-10	MIN	47	3	17	20	-15	32	2	0	0	104	2.9	22:22
2010-11	MIN	80	17	29	46	-10	98	8	0	3	170	10.0	25:03
2011-12	SJS	81	11	26	37	+8	34	5	0	2	201	5.5	22:32
2012-13	SJS	30	9	11	20	0	20	2	0	0	81	11.1	16:17
2013-14	SJS	69	22	26	48	+26	34	2	0	3	245	9.0	16:49
2014-15	SJS	82	17	43	60	-9	65	7	0	2	245	6.9	23:57
2015-16	SJS	82	27	48	75	-5	53	7	1	4	353	7.6	25:52
2016-17	SJS	82	29	47	76	+19	40	8	0	6	320	9.1	24:52
2017-18	SJS	82	12	55	67	-16	46	5	0	2	332	3.6	25:15
2018-19	SJS	82	16	67	83	+13	34	7	1	6	300	5.3	25:06
2019-20	SJS	70	12	33	45	-22	34	5	0	1	225	5.3	25:25
2020-21	SJS	56	7	22	29	-13	36	2	0	1	138	5.1	26:09
2021-22	SJS	82	10	44	54	-15	42	4	0	0	203	4.9	26:09
2022-23	CAR	82	18	43	61	+19	44	4	0	2	255	7.1	23:13
2023-24	CAR	82	10	33	43	+19	20	4	1	0	185	5.4	21:30
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1415	255	626	881	+3	827	88	3	42	3877	6.6	22:27

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

10 goals and 33 assists in all 82 games — 43 points at 21:30 a night, plus-19, with 4 power-play goals and 1 shorthanded goal on 185 shots, and 20 penalty minutes. He was 39.

56.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,321 minutes, the 93rd percentile. His ice went 55-50 against an expectation of 63.73-49.40 — eight goals of scoring missing, which on this club was the pattern.

The Finesse Game

185 attempts at a median of 52 feet, with 79 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, converting at 5.41 per cent — a high rate from that distance and the reason for ten goals at 39.

The shot from the point is still genuinely heavy and it is the third-largest volume on the roster. He walks the line and holds the puck until a forechecker commits, and 33 assists at that age is not a courtesy.

626 career assists and 881 points from a defenceman is a Hall of Fame record and it was mostly built somewhere else.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 228, and he still defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around. The skating has gone and the stick has not — he gives up the outside and takes the puck at the top of the circle.

20 penalty minutes in 82 games and 827 in 1,415 for his career. The edge that produced most of those is twenty years behind him; what is left is a very large man who is never out of position and does not need to foul.

The Intangibles

Twentieth overall in 2003 by Minnesota, a Norris Trophy in San Jose, and 1,415 games across twenty seasons — more seasons than any other player in this edition has played.

He is 39 and he played all eighty-two games. On a club that lost two top-four defencemen in a single summer, the fact that the oldest man on the roster is also the most available one is a fact worth stating plainly.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,321 minutes

Expected goals: 56.3%; 93rd pct
Shot attempts: 60%; 99th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 55 for, 50 against. Expected: 63.7 and 49.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

94th

Numbers

93rd

The two rank him within 1 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1321 minutes at five-on-five

Jaccob Slavin91%

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: CAR took 56.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.3% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,321 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jaccob Slavin	55.9%	61.7%	60.4%
Jordan Martinook	58.6%	55.3%	58.5%
Seth Jarvis	56.7%	56.1%	56.7%

55.9% together, 61.7% for him apart and 60.4% for Slavin 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

294 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.