This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brett Howden
Vegas Golden Knights Center
23 goals on 125 shots at an 18.4 per cent conversion, from a fourth-line centre.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | NYR | 66 | 6 | 17 | 23 | -16 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 74 | 8.1 | 14:56 |
| 2019-20 | NYR | 70 | 9 | 10 | 19 | -11 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 64 | 14.1 | 13:09 |
| 2020-21 | NYR | 42 | 1 | 6 | 7 | -2 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 3.0 | 12:34 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 47 | 9 | 11 | 20 | +9 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 39 | 23.1 | 10:39 |
| 2022-23 | VGK | 54 | 6 | 7 | 13 | +5 | 55 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 53 | 11.3 | 13:04 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 72 | 8 | 11 | 19 | -11 | 39 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 76 | 10.5 | 13:14 |
| 2024-25 | VGK | 80 | 23 | 17 | 40 | +17 | 46 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 125 | 18.4 | 14:52 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 431 | 62 | 79 | 141 | -9 | 205 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 464 | 13.4 | 13:25 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
23 goals and 17 assists in 80 games — 40 points at 14:52 a night, plus-17, with a shorthanded goal, 4 game-winners and 46 penalty minutes on 125 shots, converting at 18.4 per cent.
51.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 64th percentile. His ice went 45-44 against an expectation of 41.21-39.38 — four goals of scoring missing and level against.
The Finesse Game
125 attempts at a median of 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20 and 10 per cent from beyond 40. He goes to the paint and he stays there, and 23 goals at fifteen minutes a night is a genuinely good return.
17 assists in 80 games. There is no creation; he is a finisher and a defensive centre, and 141 points in 431 career games is the honest record.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 201 and he plays a hard, honest game. He forechecks first, he finishes checks, and he wins pucks below the goal line.
46 penalty minutes in 80 games is the second-highest total on this roster, which on the least-penalised club in the league is a low bar. A share of it is the extra shove after the whistle.
The Intangibles
Twenty-seventh overall in 2016 by Tampa Bay, traded to the Rangers before he had played a game, and traded here in 2021 — 431 games and 141 points.
He is 27 and had scored 24 goals in his previous three seasons combined. Twenty-three in one year is either a step up or a shooting percentage, and the shot locations say the first.
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.
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“**125 attempts at a median of 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20 and 10 per cent from beyond 40.** He goes to the paint and he stays there, and 23 goals at fifteen minutes a night is a genuinely good return.”
“He forechecks first, he finishes checks, and he wins pucks below the goal line.”
“He forechecks first, he finishes checks, and he wins pucks below the goal line.”
“A share of it is the extra shove after the whistle.”
“There is no creation; he is a finisher and a defensive centre, and 141 points in 431 career games is the honest record.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,026 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.1%
- 64th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.8%
- 50th 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: 45 for, 44 against. Expected: 41.2 and 39.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2024-25 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 73rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.26 a game
- Distance
- 2.43 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.5 mph
- 41st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 · 1026 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, 2024-25
- The club
- VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.1% — 2.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,026 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brayden McNabb | 47.3% | 52.9% | 57.0% |
| Nicolas Hague | 47.3% | 53.0% | 47.8% |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | 55.2% | 49.1% | 58.3% |
47.3% together, 52.9% for him apart and 57.0% for McNabb 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
167 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.