Photo by Jenn G from Seattle, WA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Brett Pesce

736 games, and on for 13 goals against an expected 29.

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

2015-16	CAR	69	4	12	16	-7	16	1	0	1	85	4.7	18:46
2016-17	CAR	82	2	18	20	+23	20	0	0	0	109	1.8	21:12
2017-18	CAR	65	3	16	19	-6	18	0	0	1	88	3.4	20:54
2018-19	CAR	73	7	22	29	+35	24	0	0	2	98	7.1	20:29
2019-20	CAR	61	4	14	18	+7	27	0	0	0	104	3.9	21:53
2020-21	CAR	55	4	21	25	+14	20	1	0	0	89	4.5	22:48
2021-22	CAR	70	7	21	28	+5	39	1	0	3	148	4.7	21:42
2022-23	CAR	82	5	25	30	+11	43	1	0	2	144	3.5	22:01
2023-24	CAR	70	3	10	13	+10	20	0	0	1	107	2.8	20:17
2024-25	NJD	72	3	14	17	-5	29	0	1	0	99	3.0	21:19
2025-26	NJD	37	1	6	7	-11	6	0	0	0	45	2.2	20:18
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	736	43	179	222	+76	262	4	1	10	1116	3.9	21:04

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 6 assists in 37 games — 7 points, minus-11, at 20:18 a night with 6 penalty minutes. 45 games missed. His 736th career game.

The Finesse Game

Almost none, by design. 62 unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, 71 per cent of them from beyond 40, 1 goal. 43 goals in 736 career games.

6 assists in 37 games. The first pass is clean and quick and that is the whole offensive contribution; 179 career assists against 43 goals says which half of the game he plays.

The Physical Game

6-3, 206, and he defends by closing space early rather than by finishing checks. 6 penalty minutes in 37 games is remarkable discipline for a man taking 20 minutes a night against top lines.

He owns his net front, blocks shots, and does not run out of position to do either.

The Intangibles

51.4 per cent of the expected goals, 67th percentile, and 51.8 per cent of the shot attempts, also 75th, across 663 minutes. Those are good numbers in hard minutes.

And then this: he was on the ice for 13 goals against an expected 28.7. Nearly 16 goals that the chances say should have gone in did not.

That is not a defenceman’s failing, it is his club’s — New Jersey scored 136 goals at 5-on-5 against an expected 173.9, the worst finishing gap in the National Hockey League by 16 goals. Pesce simply caught the worst of it.

1 point in his last 10. He is 31, a third-round pick, and the underlying work here is a good deal better than minus-11 and 7 points make it look.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 663 minutes

Expected goals: 51.4%; 67th pct
Shot attempts: 51.8%; 73rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 15 for, 24 against. Expected: 27.1 and 25.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

38th

Numbers

67th

The numbers rank him 29 points above where the report does. 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 — 70 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 · 37 games

Top speed: 20.9 mph; 25th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.22 a game
Distance: 2.70 miles a game
Hardest shot: 82.9 mph; 17th 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, 19 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 663 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: NJD took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.4% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 663 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Luke Hughes	55.2%	45.2%	48.9%
Nico Hischier	61.2%	46.1%	51.9%
Jesper Bratt	58.0%	47.8%	54.3%

55.2% together, 45.2% for him apart and 48.9% for Hughes apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

62 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 15% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.