This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kevin Bahl
Calgary Flames Defense
Six foot six and 230 pounds, eighty-two penalty minutes in eighty-two games, and one goal.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | NJD | 7 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 16:55 |
| 2021-22 | NJD | 17 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 6.3 | 15:45 |
| 2022-23 | NJD | 42 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +4 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 7.4 | 14:01 |
| 2023-24 | NJD | 82 | 1 | 10 | 11 | +1 | 82 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 63 | 1.6 | 17:24 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 148 | 4 | 21 | 25 | -1 | 127 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 111 | 3.6 | 16:14 |
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
1 goal and 10 assists in all 82 games for New Jersey — 11 points at 17:24 a night, plus-1, with 1 game-winner on 63 shots at 1.59 per cent, and 82 penalty minutes.
50.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,267 minutes, the 58th percentile — the best mark of any defenceman on this roster. His ice went 62-65 against an expectation of 50.76-49.44 — eleven goals scored above expectation and seven conceded above it.
The Finesse Game
63 attempts at a median of 55 feet, with 79 per cent from beyond 40 and 1 per cent from inside 20, converting at 1.59 per cent. Four goals in 148 NHL games.
10 assists. He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe, and there is no offensive dimension here at all. The club does not want one.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 230, and he is the largest man on this roster. He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes his checks.
82 penalty minutes in 82 games and 127 in 148 for his career. He takes liberties, and on a blue line whose two best players both defend with position rather than force, he is the entire physical dimension.
The Intangibles
Fifty-fifth overall in 2018 by Arizona, traded to New Jersey in the Taylor Hall deal, and 148 games at 24 with a career minus-1.
He arrived here in the Jacob Markstrom trade. A club that lost Noah Hanifin and Chris Tanev has replaced part of them with a 6-6 twenty-four-year-old who has never scored, and the sixty-second percentile of chances says the trade-off is a real one.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“**He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes his checks.**”
“**He clears the front of his own net by moving grown men out of it and he finishes his checks.**”
“**6-6 and 230, and he is the largest man on this roster.**”
“**He takes liberties**, and on a blue line whose two best players both defend with position rather than force, he is the entire physical dimension.”
“**He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe**, and there is no offensive dimension here at all.”
“**He does not carry the puck out and the first pass is short and safe**, and there is no offensive dimension here at all.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,267 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.7%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.9%
- 45th 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: 62 for, 65 against. Expected: 50.8 and 49.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 42 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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
- 21.8 mph
- 52nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.37 a game
- Distance
- 2.49 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.9 mph
- 77th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 with NJD · 1267 minutes at five-on-five
- Simon Nemec16%
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
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.7% — level with the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,267 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Marino | 50.0% | 51.2% | 48.9% |
| Jesper Bratt | 57.0% | 47.4% | 56.4% |
| Timo Meier | 52.1% | 50.1% | 47.3% |
50.0% together, 51.2% for him apart and 48.9% for Marino apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
94 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 1% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.