Patrick Brown

Undrafted, 138 NHL games across seven seasons, and a job that exists because somebody has to kill penalties.

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

2014-15	CAR	7	0	0	0	-4	4	0	0	0	4	0.0	8:53
2015-16	CAR	7	1	1	2	+4	4	0	0	0	8	12.5	12:36
2016-17	CAR	14	0	0	0	-6	0	0	0	0	12	0.0	9:43
2019-20	VGK	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	50.0	10:04
2020-21	VGK	4	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	5	0.0	9:06
2021-22	PHI	44	4	5	9	-16	11	0	0	0	51	7.8	12:26
2022-23	PHI/OTT	61	4	8	12	-2	44	0	1	0	60	6.7	11:23
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	138	10	14	24	-24	65	0	1	0	142	7.0	11:24

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

4 goals and 8 assists in 61 games for Ottawa — 12 points at 11:23 a night, minus-2, with a shorthanded goal on 60 shots and 44 penalty minutes.

46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 617 minutes, the 31st percentile, which for a fourth-line centre taking defensive draws is about right. His ice went 19-22 against an expectation of 20.47-23.19 — very close to the chances.

It was the most games he has played in a season in his career, at thirty.

The Finesse Game

60 attempts at a median of 29 feet, converting at 6.67 per cent. 24 points in 138 career games.

There is no offensive game and there is no pretence of one. He gets pucks deep, he retrieves them, and the shift ends with a faceoff rather than a chance.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 217 and he plays a hard, simple, physical game — 65 penalty minutes in 138 games.

He takes defensive-zone draws and he kills penalties, and that is the whole job. The skating is ordinary at 21.9 mph, the 34th percentile, and 1.88 miles a game at the 10th says the shifts are short and spent in one end.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Boston College, and 138 NHL games across seven seasons — 61 of them last year, at thirty. Nine years of American League hockey to get a fourth-line job.

He is 31. He is the thirteenth forward and the emergency centre, on a club that has just lost two of them, which is a more useful thing to be in Boston this year than it was anywhere last year.

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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
35.9% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
31% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, out of Boston College, and 138 NHL games across seven seasons — 61 of them last year, at thirty.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He takes defensive-zone draws and he kills penalties, and that is the whole job.”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“He takes defensive-zone draws and he kills penalties, and that is the whole job.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 617 minutes

Expected goals: 46.9%; 32nd pct
Shot attempts: 47.3%; 32nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 22 against. Expected: 20.5 and 23.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

29th

Numbers

32nd

The two rank him within 3 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 58 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

2022-23 with PHI · 436 minutes at five-on-five

Nicolas Deslauriers63%
Zack MacEwennow OTT34%
Joel Farabee11%

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: OTT took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: 617 minutes at five-on-five — 24th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Nicolas Deslauriers	42.0%	50.1%	45.1%
Travis Sanheim	47.9%	46.5%	45.5%
Rasmus Ristolainen	52.6%	45.4%	48.2%

42.0% together, 50.1% for him apart and 45.1% for Deslauriers 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

92 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 36% from beyond forty.