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

Jacob Bernard-Docker

40 games, 8 points, and a right-shot depth defenceman acquired at the deadline for nothing much.

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

2020-21	OTT	5	0	0	0	+2	0	0	0	0	6	0.0	13:40
2021-22	OTT	8	0	1	1	+1	4	0	0	0	6	0.0	14:46
2022-23	OTT	19	0	1	1	-2	11	0	0	0	22	0.0	16:01
2023-24	OTT	72	4	10	14	-7	25	0	0	0	51	7.8	15:42
2024-25	OTT/BUF	40	2	6	8	+5	17	0	0	0	32	6.3	13:37
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	144	6	18	24	-1	57	0	0	0	117	5.1	15:02

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

2 goals and 6 assists in 40 games for 8 points, plus-5, on 13:37 a night between Ottawa and Detroit.

32 shots in 40 games. A third-pair role on two clubs and a set of numbers that says very little either way.

The Finesse Game

Modest and adequate. The first pass is clean, he does not panic under a forecheck, and there is no offensive game — 8 points in 40 games is his career rate.

He was a first-round pick partly on a puck-moving projection that has settled into competence.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 196, and honest. He defends his net front reasonably, takes contact, and does not initiate.

17 penalty minutes over 40 games. Nothing careless.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, five NHL seasons of third-pair work, and a deadline trade at 25 that cost very little.

The projection is a sixth or seventh defenceman. On a blue line that has Chiarot and Travis Hamonic both over 34, having a 25-year-old right shot who can play is worth having.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is clean, he does not panic under a forecheck, and there is no offensive game”
clears-the-creasepresent and ordinary· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He defends his net front reasonably, takes contact, and does not initiate.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He defends his net front reasonably, takes contact, and does not initiate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 475 minutes

Expected goals: 48.7%; 41st pct
Shot attempts: 49.8%; 50th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 16 against. Expected: 16.1 and 16.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

17th

Numbers

41st

The numbers rank him 24 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 — 66 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 · 40 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 41st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.07 a game
Distance: 1.97 miles a game
Hardest shot: 83.0 mph; 13th 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 with OTT · 323 minutes at five-on-five

Tyler Kleven80%
Thomas Chabot14%

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: BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.7% — 0.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: 475 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Tyler Kleven	43.3%	54.3%	44.9%
Adam Gaudette	52.3%	48.0%	51.9%
Nick Cousins	49.1%	48.7%	49.4%

43.3% together, 54.3% for him apart and 44.9% for Kleven apart. He was better away from Kleven, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Kleven.

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

55 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.