This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Tage Thompson

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.

50.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 61st percentile, and on-ice goals of 61-51 against an expected 45-43. 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.

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
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
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.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
31.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
8 of 112 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 7.1%, 94th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He protects the puck well and is difficult to move on the wall”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“he does not forecheck with weight or spend time in front of the net.”
net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“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.”
playmakerpresent and ordinary· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The playmaking is better than it was; 28 assists is honest for a shooter of this type.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,034 minutes

Expected goals: 50.9%; 62nd pct
Shot attempts: 51%; 64th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 61 for, 51 against. Expected: 44.9 and 43.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

84th

Numbers

62nd

The report ranks him 22 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 76 games

Top speed: 22.8 mph; 77th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.63 a game
Distance: 3.00 miles a game
Hardest shot: 106.0 mph; 100th 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1034 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, 2024-25

The club: BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.9% — 3.0 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	49.7%	52.1%	45.2%
Rasmus Dahlin	53.9%	48.3%	53.4%
Bowen Byram	49.9%	51.8%	48.3%

49.7% together, 52.1% for him apart and 45.2% for Peterka apart. Peterka was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Peterka 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

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.