Photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tage Thompson

6-6, 40 goals, and a shot chart that says he is doing it the hard way.

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

2017-18	STL	41	3	6	9	-12	12	0	0	0	55	5.5	11:55
2018-19	BUF	65	7	5	12	-22	20	1	0	0	108	6.5	12:08
2019-20	BUF	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	6:59
2020-21	BUF	38	8	6	14	-6	17	2	0	0	96	8.3	13:52
2021-22	BUF	78	38	30	68	-17	37	10	2	4	253	15.0	17:53
2022-23	BUF	78	47	47	94	+4	39	20	1	7	295	15.9	18:35
2023-24	BUF	71	29	27	56	-1	43	9	2	3	246	11.8	18:07
2024-25	BUF	76	44	28	72	-2	35	7	0	6	242	18.2	18:45
2025-26	BUF	81	40	41	81	-6	35	6	0	5	272	14.7	19:15
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	529	216	190	406	-62	238	55	5	25	1567	13.8	16:52

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

40 goals and 41 assists in 81 games — 81 points, minus-6, at 19:15 a night. 272 shots on goal, the most on the club by a distance.

The Finesse Game

The shot is the best on the roster and one of the best in the league. It is heavy, it is quick, and at 6-6 the release point is somewhere a goaltender has not seen a puck come from before.

Where he takes them is the striking part: the median unblocked attempt came from 32 feet, with 29 per cent from beyond 40 and only 28 per cent from inside 20. He is scoring 40 goals from the outside, which almost nobody does, and it works because the shot is genuinely exceptional rather than because the chances are good.

The hands for a man this size are absurd. He handles pucks in traffic that players a foot shorter would lose.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 220 and he is not a punishing player — 35 penalty minutes, and he wins position with reach rather than force. He gets knocked off pucks more than a man his size should.

The Intangibles

Here is where the 2 accounts part company. The scoreboard says a 40-goal, 81-point centre. The 5-on-5 record says 50.5 per cent of the expected goals, 58th percentile — dead average — with the goals 59-53 and the expected goals slightly against him at 53.6 to 52.6.

Both are real. He is a genuine finisher on a club that led the NHL in scoring above its expected goals by 41, and some of that is him and some of it is the whole room shooting hot at once.

10 points in his last 10 games. He is 28 and this is his level.

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

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
28.7% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 91st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
14:58 a game at five-on-five, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,212 minutes

Expected goals: 50.5%; 59th pct
Shot attempts: 50.4%; 63rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 59 for, 53 against. Expected: 53.6 and 52.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

86th

Numbers

59th

The report ranks him 27 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 79 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, 2025-26 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 80th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.17 a game
Distance: 2.97 miles a game
Hardest shot: 97.9 mph; 99th 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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 5 goals, 5 assists, 34 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1212 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, 2025-26

The club: BUF took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,212 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alex Tuch	51.2%	49.8%	54.3%
Rasmus Dahlin	52.4%	48.9%	55.5%
Peyton Krebs	51.4%	49.8%	45.9%

51.2% together, 49.8% for him apart and 54.3% for Tuch apart. Tuch was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

418 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 42 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 28% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.