This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Tage Thompson
Buffalo Sabres Center
44 goals on an 18.2 per cent rate from 6-6, and a 49.5 per cent chance share to go with them.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 448 | 176 | 149 | 325 | -56 | 203 | 49 | 5 | 20 | 1295 | 13.6 | 16:27 |
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
44 goals and 28 assists in 76 games for 72 points, minus-2, on 18:45 a night and 242 shots — the most goals on the club by 8.
49.5 per cent at five-on-five, the 46th percentile, and on-ice goals of 40-48 against an expected 43-44. The goals are real and the line was outscored anyway, which is the whole Buffalo story in one player.
The Finesse Game
The shot is a genuine outlier. It is released from a 6-6 frame with an enormous reach, which means the puck leaves from a place goaltenders cannot see and at an angle they have not set for. 44 goals on 242 shots is 18.2 per cent, which is high, and he has now done it at that rate for four seasons — this one is not luck the way some of his teammates’ are.
The distances are the caution. A median shot from 35 feet with a third of his attempts from beyond 40 is a volume shooter, not a net-front scorer, and a shooting rate that high from those locations is unusual enough to expect some regression. The playmaking is better than it was; 28 assists is honest for a shooter of this type.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 220, and he plays a strange physical game for the size. He protects the puck well and is difficult to move on the wall, and he does not forecheck with weight or spend time in front of the net.
35 penalty minutes. Durability has been mixed — 76 games last season after a shortened one before it, and the frame has always taken more punishment than it delivers.
The Intangibles
A first-round pick who was traded as a throw-in, spent three years being called a project, and has now scored 44 or 47 goals in three of the last four seasons.
The reservation is not the shot. It is that a club built around a 6-6 shooter and two puck-moving defencemen has now missed the playoffs in every season he has been good, and nothing about his game changes the shape of the ones he is on.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,034 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.5%
- 46th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.6%
- 60th 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: 40 for, 48 against. Expected: 42.8 and 43.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 38 points above where the numbers do. 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 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 1034 minutes at five-on-five
- John-Jason Peterkanow UTA44%
- Alex Tuch43%
- Jiri Kulich29%
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 49.5% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,034 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| John-Jason Peterka | 48.0% | 50.9% | 46.5% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 53.2% | 46.1% | 52.7% |
| Bowen Byram | 46.8% | 51.6% | 49.4% |
48.0% together, 50.9% for him apart and 46.5% for Peterka 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
355 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 44 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 23% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 32% from beyond forty.