Brett Kulak

A dependable third-pairing defenceman on his fourth organisation, playing 83 games without incident.

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

2014-15	CGY	1	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	—	19:31
2015-16	CGY	8	0	0	0	-2	0	0	0	0	9	0.0	12:21
2016-17	CGY	21	0	3	3	-3	12	0	0	0	19	0.0	14:15
2017-18	CGY	71	2	6	8	-3	27	0	0	0	73	2.7	12:59
2018-19	MTL	57	6	11	17	+12	31	0	1	3	102	5.9	17:51
2019-20	MTL	56	0	7	7	-1	12	0	0	0	101	0.0	17:08
2020-21	MTL	46	2	6	8	+3	20	0	0	0	57	3.5	16:06
2021-22	MTL/EDM	74	5	16	21	-4	45	0	0	0	92	5.4	17:45
2022-23	EDM	82	3	17	20	+11	41	0	0	0	114	2.6	17:31
2023-24	EDM	82	3	13	16	0	30	0	0	1	94	3.2	15:23
2024-25	EDM	82	7	18	25	-7	18	0	0	0	135	5.2	20:32
2025-26	EDM/PIT/COL	83	1	11	12	-4	38	0	0	0	95	1.1	18:58
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	663	29	108	137	+2	276	0	1	4	891	3.3	17:05

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 12 points in 83 games, minus-4, on 19 minutes a night across 2 clubs.

The Finesse Game

Simple and clean. He makes a quick first pass, skates the puck out when the outlet is covered, and does not force anything. 29 goals in 663 career games describes a player who has never pretended to be an offensive defenceman.

The skating is his most useful attribute — good enough to escape pressure and to defend the rush against real speed.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 192, and he is willing without being punishing. He blocks shots and boxes out; he does not move people.

The Intangibles

12 years of being the defenceman a club acquires when it needs its third pairing to stop being a problem. Nobody talks about him, which is the whole point.

At 32 he is exactly this, and will be for a few more years. The minus-4 across 2 teams is about as neutral a season as a defenceman can have.

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

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
83 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,421 minutes

Expected goals: 46.3%; 23rd pct
Shot attempts: 48.8%; 44th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 54 against. Expected: 51.6 and 59.8.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

49th

Numbers

23rd

The report ranks him 26 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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, 2025-26 · 83 games

Top speed: 21.9 mph; 60th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.81 a game
Distance: 2.73 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.7 mph; 56th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 16 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with EDM · 498 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, 2025-26

The club: COL took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.3% — 10.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: 1,421 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ty Emberson	44.0%	46.9%	49.5%
Kris Letang	53.5%	44.2%	49.2%
Sidney Crosby	47.8%	46.1%	50.7%

44.0% together, 46.9% for him apart and 49.5% for Emberson apart. Emberson was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

135 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 57 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.