This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brett Kulak
Edmonton Oilers Defense
The 22nd-fewest blocks of the 202 qualified defencemen, and the 89th percentile for ground covered.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 334 | 15 | 49 | 64 | +2 | 149 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 453 | 3.3 | 16:05 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
5 goals and 16 assists in 74 games for Montreal and Edmonton — 21 points, a career high, with a minus-4 and 45 penalty minutes at 17:45 a night, the 29th percentile among defencemen.
52.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,211 minutes, the 69th percentile. His ice went 51-61 against an expectation of 48.68-44.79 — sixteen more goals against than the chances promised, which is most of a season spent in front of Montreal’s goaltending.
Read the two clubs. Montreal finished last in the league and Edmonton eleventh; the 52.1 is an average of the two and the goals-against is mostly the first of them.
Sixteen playoff games for five assists.
The Finesse Game
4.20 shots per 60 is the 46th percentile among defencemen and 13 per cent come from the slot at a median of 52 feet. 97.4 mph is the 46th-hardest of the 192 the tracking covers — a genuinely hard shot from a third-pair defenceman.
No power-play time worth the name — 0:04 a night — and not one of his twenty-one points came on it. He has no power-play goals in 334 NHL games.
0.98 even-strength points per 60 is the 55th percentile. All of it at even strength, which for a bottom-pair defenceman is the whole of the offensive case.
2.51 giveaways per 60 is the 87th percentile against 0.96 takeaways at the 56th.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 192. 2.88 blocks per 60 is the 22nd-fewest of the 202 qualified defencemen and 4.70 hits is the 58th percentile. He defends by moving, not by standing in the way.
3.7 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 94th percentile among defencemen and 8.82 miles per 60 is the 89th — he sprints and covers ground at a rate almost no third-pair defenceman does, against an ordinary 22.1 mph top speed.
0.96 penalties taken per 60 is the 80th percentile — forty-five minutes in seventy-four games, which on this club is a problem it already has enough of.
The Intangibles
One hundred and fifth overall in 2012, the fourth round, and 334 NHL games at 28 with 64 points.
Eight seasons at twelve to eighteen minutes and a career-high twenty-one points in the one just finished. The record is a third-pair defenceman who has never been anything else and has never been out of a lineup for long.
Edmonton has Darnell Nurse, Evan Bouchard, Cody Ceci and Tyson Barrie above him. He is the fifth defenceman on a conference finalist and the skating file says he is a better one than that ranking implies.
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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
3 of 79 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 3.8%, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
“he sprints and covers ground at a rate almost no third-pair defenceman does”
“He defends by moving, not by standing in the way.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,211 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.1%
- 71st pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.8%
- 63rd 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: 51 for, 61 against. Expected: 48.7 and 44.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 42 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 56 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, 2021-22 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 71st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.11 a game
- Distance
- 2.61 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.4 mph
- 84th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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
2021-22 with MTL · 934 minutes at five-on-five
- David Savard16%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- EDM took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.1% — 0.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,211 minutes at five-on-five — 86th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff Petry | 49.1% | 53.3% | 48.5% |
| Nick Suzuki | 53.9% | 51.6% | 43.7% |
| Josh Anderson | 49.8% | 52.6% | 46.2% |
49.1% together, 53.3% for him apart and 48.5% for Petry apart. He was better away from Petry, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Petry.
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
112 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 50 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.