This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Brett Kulak

A 54.5 per cent chance share on a third pair, and 25 points from a defenceman nobody discusses.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	580	28	97	125	+6	238	0	1	4	796	3.5	16:49

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

7 goals and 18 assists in 82 games for 25 points, minus-7, on 20:32 a night — 82 games and the third-most five-on-five minutes on the club.

53.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 83rd percentile, with on-ice goals of 53-67 against an expected 61-52. That is 10 goals of finishing missing and 5 of goaltending against, which is this club’s season in a third-pair defenceman.

The Finesse Game

Quietly good. He escapes pressure cleanly, moves the puck early and accurately, and does not stall a breakout — which on a team whose whole offence starts with a first pass is worth more than the point total suggests.

135 shots and 7 goals with 81 per cent from beyond 40 feet. There is no rush game and none is required.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 192, and he defends with feet and stick rather than weight. He does not clear a crease and he is rarely beaten badly enough to need to.

18 penalty minutes over 82 games is exceptional discipline for a defenceman playing 20 minutes.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick in 2012, three organisations, and a decade of being the third-pair defenceman every contender wishes it had.

At 31 the projection is unchanged and the value is in the price. He plays 20 minutes on a Cup finalist for a fraction of what the men above him cost.

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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He escapes pressure cleanly, moves the puck early and accurately, and does not stall a breakout”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“6-1 and 192, and he defends with feet and stick rather than weight.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear a crease and he is rarely beaten badly enough to need to.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,411 minutes

Expected goals: 53.7%; 83rd pct
Shot attempts: 53.2%; 84th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 67 against. Expected: 60.5 and 52.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

49th

Numbers

83rd

The numbers rank him 34 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 87th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.11 a game
Distance: 2.98 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.6 mph; 72nd 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

2024-25 · 1411 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: EDM took 54.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.7% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,411 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ty Emberson	50.1%	55.8%	47.4%
Leon Draisaitl	57.6%	51.6%	60.5%
Vasily Podkolzin	59.0%	51.4%	56.3%

50.1% together, 55.8% for him apart and 47.4% for Emberson apart. He was better away from Emberson, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Emberson.

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

188 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 57 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.