This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jacob Bryson

Five-foot-nine, 177 pounds, and a minus-24 that the chances say was not his doing.

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

2020-21	BUF	38	1	8	9	-1	12	0	0	0	24	4.2	19:03
2021-22	BUF	73	1	9	10	-9	12	1	0	0	43	2.3	18:20
2022-23	BUF	59	1	8	9	-24	8	0	0	0	27	3.7	14:35
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	170	3	25	28	-34	32	1	0	0	94	3.2	17:12

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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 8 assists in 59 games — 9 points at 14:35 a night, minus-24, on 27 shots and 8 penalty minutes.

47 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 802 minutes, the 32nd percentile — unremarkable. His ice went 25-51 against an expectation of 31.89-35.99, which is six goals of scoring missing and fifteen more conceded than the chances predicted. Fifteen goals is not a defenceman’s doing; it is a save percentage, and Buffalo’s was 25th in the league.

The Finesse Game

27 shots in 59 games, at a median of 52 feet, none from inside 20. One goal, and 3 in 170 career games.

There is no offensive game at all. The first pass is clean and quick and that is the whole contribution — 25 assists in 170 games says even that is modest.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 177, which makes him the smallest defenceman in this book so far, and there is nothing physical — 32 penalty minutes in 170 games, and he cannot defend the front of his own net.

The skating is reasonable at 22.7 mph, the 74th percentile, which is genuinely quick for a defenceman. A man this size needs the lateral quickness to be exceptional rather than merely good, and nothing in the feed reports that — what can be said is that 170 NHL games at 177 pounds is not nothing, and the results so far suggest the feet are good without being good enough.

The Intangibles

Ninety-ninth overall in 2017, out of Providence, and a fourth-round pick with 170 NHL games.

He is 25. Buffalo has spent four years trying to find out whether he is a regular, and the arrival of Clifton and Johnson is the club’s answer — he is a seventh defenceman on a team that needs to get harder, and he is the opposite of hard.

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
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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.14 penalty minutes a game over 59, 2nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“there is nothing physical — 32 penalty minutes in 170 games, and he cannot defend the front of his own net”
transitionpresent and ordinary· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is clean and quick and that is the whole contribution”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 802 minutes

Expected goals: 47%; 33rd pct
Shot attempts: 50%; 53rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 51 against. Expected: 31.9 and 36.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

11th

Numbers

33rd

The numbers rank him 22 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 99 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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

2022-23 · 802 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, 2022-23

The club: BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.0% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 802 minutes at five-on-five — 39th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Ilya Lyubushkin	41.5%	50.1%	48.1%
Dylan Cozens	51.3%	45.2%	49.3%
JJ Peterka	46.5%	47.2%	49.9%

41.5% together, 50.1% for him apart and 48.1% for Lyubushkin 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

36 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.