Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

16

Connor Brown

Edmonton Oilers Right Wing

Four goals in 71 games on ice that was owed thirty, in his first full season back from a torn knee.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16TOR7156-20100119.114:58
2016-17TOR82201636+31021413914.416:12
2017-18TOR8214142801811211911.815:01
2018-19TOR8282129+1116000859.413:48
2019-20OTT71162743-6243011739.320:07
2020-21OTT56211435+11215112317.118:15
2021-22OTT64102939-15100101218.320:03
2022-23WSH4000-3000020.016:46
2023-24EDM714812-8100001083.712:48
2024-25 so far
Career51994134228-1910088888110.716:23

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

71 games, 4 goals and 8 assists for 12 points, 10 penalty minutes, 12:48 a night and minus-8. He took 48.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 774 minutes, the 42nd percentile, and his ice went 16-23 against an expectation of 30.59-32.34.

Fifteen goals of scoring that never arrived on his ice, which is the largest such shortfall of any forward on this roster. He had played four games in two years before this one, having torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in his first weeks as a Capital.

The Finesse Game

108 shots at a median of 28 feet with 39 per cent from inside 20, converted at 3.7 per cent. Four goals on that volume is not a slump, it is a season that never started.

134 career assists in 519 games at a career 10.7 per cent conversion. The hands were never the attraction. What he does is arrive first and take the puck off somebody, and last season he arrived second all year.

The Physical Game

He forechecks hard and finishes his checks at 6-0 and 184, which is the whole job description.

10 penalty minutes in 71 games is one of the lowest rates on the roster. He does not retaliate and he does not take liberties.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2012 out of Toronto, nine seasons, and 228 points in 519 games. He kills penalties and has 8 career shorthanded goals in 519 games.

The knee is the whole question. A 30-year-old checking winger returning from a season lost to a reconstructed ligament is not a player anybody should expect to be what he was, and the chance share says the legs came back before the hands did.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 774 minutes

Expected goals
48.6%
43rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.9%
62nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 23 against. Expected: 30.6 and 32.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
35th
Numbers
43rd

The two rank him within 8 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 316 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 774 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, 2023-24

The club
EDM took 56.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.6% — 8.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 774 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Darnell Nurse42.5%53.2%56.5%
Cody Ceci42.4%53.0%54.5%
Brett Kulak50.2%47.7%55.9%

42.5% together, 53.2% for him apart and 56.5% for Nurse apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

147 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.