This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Brett Pesce
Carolina Hurricanes Defense
Two minutes forty-eight a night shorthanded at the 92nd percentile, 1.15 giveaways per 60 at the 10th, and 1.54 hits at the 7th.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 475 | 31 | 124 | 155 | +71 | 164 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 721 | 4.3 | 21:03 |
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
7 goals and 21 assists in 70 games — 28 points at 21:42 a night, plus-5, on 148 shots and 39 penalty minutes.
52.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,243 minutes, the 72nd percentile among defencemen. His ice went 59-53 against an expectation of 58.69-53.68 — both ends landed within a goal of the chances, which is the plainest description of a defenceman doing exactly what the structure asks.
2:48 a night shorthanded is the 92nd percentile among defencemen, on the best penalty kill in the league.
The Finesse Game
148 attempts at a median of 54 feet with 6 per cent from inside 20, off an 87.3 mph release at the 21st percentile. Seven goals at 4.7 per cent.
1.16 even-strength points per 60 is the 75th percentile among defencemen and 124 assists in 475 career games.
1.15 giveaways per 60 is the 10th percentile — almost nobody at the position loses the puck less. The first pass is short, correct and instant, and it is the whole offensive contribution.
The Physical Game
6-3 and he ends a possession with a stick rather than a body — 1.78 takeaways per 60 is the 94th percentile among defencemen. 1.54 hits per 60 is the 7th percentile.
Carolina’s two best defencemen both defend this way, and Pesce and Jaccob Slavin between them recorded fewer hits per minute than almost any pair in the league while playing on the club that conceded fewest goals in it.
Top speed 21.3 mph is the 8th percentile among defencemen and 0.3 bursts above 20 mph a game the 9th. He is slow and it does not matter, because the gap is closed before speed is required.
The Intangibles
Sixty-sixth overall in 2013, third round, out of New Hampshire, and 475 games for one club with a plus-71.
He is 27, in the last year of his contract. He is the second-best defenceman on the best defensive club in hockey and the eighth-best paid one on his own team — and Carolina, which has Slavin, Skjei, Burns and de Haan all signed beyond this season, has a decision to make that has nothing to do with how good he is.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
“6-3 and he ends a possession with a stick rather than a body — 1.78 takeaways per 60 is the 94th percentile among defencemen”
“2:48 a night shorthanded is the 92nd percentile among defencemen”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,243 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.2%
- 72nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 55.4%
- 89th 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: 59 for, 53 against. Expected: 58.7 and 53.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 40th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.27 a game
- Distance
- 2.96 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.3 mph
- 25th 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 · 1243 minutes at five-on-five
- Brady Skjei88%
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
- CAR took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.2% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,243 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brady Skjei | 54.3% | 38.5% | 50.7% |
| Jesper Fast | 56.1% | 50.3% | 58.6% |
| Jordan Staal | 55.0% | 51.0% | 58.8% |
54.3% together, 38.5% for him apart and 50.7% for Skjei 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
207 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.