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

Drake Batherson

A fourth-round pick with 66 points and a career minus-71 in 309 games.

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

2018-19	OTT	20	3	6	9	-2	6	2	0	2	18	16.7	13:25
2019-20	OTT	23	3	7	10	-12	13	1	0	0	32	9.4	15:34
2020-21	OTT	56	17	17	34	-17	8	5	0	3	111	15.3	16:28
2021-22	OTT	46	17	27	44	+4	32	3	0	3	110	15.4	18:56
2022-23	OTT	82	22	40	62	-35	33	14	0	2	249	8.8	18:36
2023-24	OTT	82	28	38	66	-9	42	7	0	4	196	14.3	18:10
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	309	90	135	225	-71	134	32	0	14	716	12.6	17:35

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

All 82 games, 28 goals and 38 assists for 66 points, 7 on the power play, 42 penalty minutes, 18:10 a night and minus-9, with 4 game-winners. He took 48.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,190 minutes, the 42nd percentile, and his ice went 51-56 against an expectation of 48.98-51.79.

Two goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. Twenty-eight goals and 66 points are both career highs, on the wrong side of the chances at five-on-five.

The Finesse Game

297 attempts at a median of 26 feet with 38 per cent of them from inside twenty, 196 of those on goal, converted at 14.3 per cent against a career 12.57 across 716 shots.

135 career assists in 309 games. He works the right half-wall on the power play and finds the backdoor as well as anybody on the club; 32 career power-play goals in 309 games is most of why he is employed. Fourteen and a bit per cent is above his own career rate and will not hold.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 209 and took 42 penalty minutes.

134 career penalty minutes in 309 games. He is large without playing large — he does not forecheck by contact, does not clear the front of the net and is not the man who wins a puck on the wall. The size shows up only in reach.

The Intangibles

121st overall in 2017, six seasons, 225 points in 309 games and a career minus-71.

Minus-71 in 309 games is a large negative for a man with 225 points, and a fourth-round pick who has become a 66-point winger is a real piece of scouting. Both of those are true at once.

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

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
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He works the right half-wall on the power play and finds the backdoor as well as anybody on the club; 32 career power-play goals in 309 games is most of why he is employed.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,190 minutes

Expected goals: 48.6%; 43rd pct
Shot attempts: 50.7%; 60th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 56 against. Expected: 49.0 and 51.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

31st

Numbers

43rd

The two rank him within 12 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 74th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.29 a game
Distance: 2.95 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 67th 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

2023-24 · 1190 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: OTT took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.6% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,190 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brady Tkachuk	52.1%	45.7%	57.4%
Jakob Chychrun	45.9%	50.6%	48.5%
Tim Stützle	49.5%	48.1%	51.3%

52.1% together, 45.7% for him apart and 57.4% for Tkachuk apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Tkachuk and did not follow him.

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

297 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.