This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jacob Bryson
Buffalo Sabres Defense
5-9 and 177 pounds, a 44 per cent chance share, and 622 minutes that the club could not afford.
| 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 | BUF | 36 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +5 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 6.7 | 14:41 |
| 2024-25 | BUF | 48 | 0 | 7 | 7 | -9 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 0.0 | 14:24 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 254 | 4 | 39 | 43 | -38 | 50 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 129 | 3.1 | 16:19 |
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
0 goals and 7 assists in 48 games for 7 points, minus-9, on 14:24 a night.
44 per cent at five-on-five, the 10th percentile, over 622 minutes. His on-ice goals were 38-34 against an expected 22-28, which means 16 goals of finishing luck turned a disastrous chance share into a merely bad rating.
The Finesse Game
The skating is fine and the first pass is quick, and that is the whole of the positive case. 20 shots in 48 games and no goals.
There is no offence to project and no power-play value, and a defenceman with no shot and no size has to be exceptional at defending to hold a job. He is not.
The Physical Game
5-9 and 177, one of the smallest defencemen in the league, and the size decides everything. He cannot clear a net front, cannot win a board battle against an NHL forward, and is outmuscled below the goal line every night.
10 penalty minutes over 48 games. He is not compensating with his stick, which is honest and does not help.
The Intangibles
A fourth-round pick, four years at Providence, and six seasons of being the seventh defenceman on a club that keeps not making the playoffs.
The honest projection is an American League defenceman. A club that finished 27th in chance suppression giving 622 minutes to a 10th-percentile share is not a detail; it is part of the explanation.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 622 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44%
- 10th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47%
- 24th 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: 38 for, 34 against. Expected: 22.0 and 28.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 315 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 57 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
2024-25 · 622 minutes at five-on-five
- Connor Cliftonnow PIT37%
- Bowen Byram18%
- Owen Power17%
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 44.0% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 622 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connor Clifton | 37.5% | 47.6% | 47.4% |
| Ryan McLeod | 46.6% | 42.5% | 46.3% |
| Alex Tuch | 45.9% | 43.0% | 48.5% |
37.5% together, 47.6% for him apart and 47.4% for Clifton 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
29 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 0 of them goals. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.