This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Tage Thompson
Buffalo Sabres Center
Six foot six, forty-seven goals two seasons ago, and twenty-nine in seventy-one games.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 372 | 132 | 121 | 253 | -54 | 168 | 42 | 5 | 14 | 1053 | 12.5 | 15:58 |
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
29 goals and 27 assists in 71 games — 56 points at 18:07 a night, minus-1, with 9 power-play goals, 2 shorthanded goals and 3 game-winners on 246 shots, converting at 11.79 per cent, and 43 penalty minutes.
He scored 47 goals two seasons before this one. Twenty-nine in seventy-one games is a rate of 34 across a full year, so this is a step down rather than a collapse, and it happened on the same shot volume.
51.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 968 minutes, the 63rd percentile. His ice went 46-36 against an expectation of 43.62-41.19 — nine fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted.
The Finesse Game
246 attempts at a median of 33 feet, with 28 per cent from beyond 40 and 20 per cent from inside 20, converting at 11.79 per cent.
The release comes from further out than a man that size should be able to score from and it is genuinely heavy. A goaltender setting for a shot at thirty-five feet from a 6-6 centre is dealing with an angle nobody else in the league produces, and 132 goals in 372 career games says it is not a trick.
27 assists. He will make the pass but he is a shooter first, and 42 career power-play goals in 372 games is where the shot is worth the most.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 220, and he does not play as heavy as the frame. He protects the puck with reach rather than by winning a battle, and he will be moved off the wall by a defenceman who commits to it.
43 penalty minutes in 71 games and 168 in 372 for his career. He does not agitate and he does not retaliate, and the size is used for the shot rather than for anything else.
The Intangibles
Twenty-sixth overall in 2016 by St. Louis, traded here in the Ryan O’Reilly deal, and 372 games and 253 points at 26 with a career minus-54.
A 6-6 centre who scores 47 goals in a season is one of about three players in the league who can do that, and he did it on a club that has not made the playoffs. The 29 is the number that decides whether the 47 was the player or the 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.
- 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.
“**246 attempts at a median of 33 feet, with 28 per cent from beyond 40 and 20 per cent from inside 20**, converting at 11.79 per cent.”
“27 assists. **He will make the pass but he is a shooter first**, and 42 career power-play goals in 372 games is where the shot is worth the most.”
“He protects the puck with reach rather than by winning a battle, and he will be moved off the wall by a defenceman who commits to it.”
“**6-6 and 220, and he does not play as heavy as the frame.**”
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate, and the size is used for the shot rather than for anything else.”
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate, and the size is used for the shot rather than for anything else.”
“with **9 power-play goals**, **2 shorthanded goals** and 3 game-winners on **246 shots**, converting at **11.79 per cent**, and 43 penalty minutes.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 968 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.4%
- 63rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.3%
- 81st 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: 46 for, 36 against. Expected: 43.6 and 41.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 84th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.52 a game
- Distance
- 2.84 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 102.1 mph
- 100th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 · 968 minutes at five-on-five
- Alex Tuch65%
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
- BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.4% — 2.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 968 minutes at five-on-five — 54th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Tuch | 52.6% | 49.2% | 47.8% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 52.8% | 50.2% | 50.8% |
| Jeff Skinner | 51.8% | 51.2% | 46.8% |
52.6% together, 49.2% for him apart and 47.8% for Tuch apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
340 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 20% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.