TJ Brodie
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
Signed at 34 to make the first pass, having just posted the best chance share of any defenceman on this roster — in Toronto.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | CGY | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 16:00 |
| 2011-12 | CGY | 54 | 2 | 12 | 14 | +3 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 44 | 4.5 | 16:29 |
| 2012-13 | CGY | 47 | 2 | 12 | 14 | -9 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 4.5 | 20:13 |
| 2013-14 | CGY | 81 | 4 | 27 | 31 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 104 | 3.9 | 24:04 |
| 2014-15 | CGY | 81 | 11 | 30 | 41 | +15 | 30 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 133 | 8.3 | 25:12 |
| 2015-16 | CGY | 70 | 6 | 39 | 45 | +4 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 7.6 | 25:16 |
| 2016-17 | CGY | 82 | 6 | 30 | 36 | -16 | 24 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 78 | 7.7 | 23:35 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 73 | 4 | 28 | 32 | -16 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 118 | 3.4 | 23:41 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 79 | 9 | 25 | 34 | +29 | 24 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 102 | 8.8 | 21:28 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 64 | 4 | 15 | 19 | +7 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 65 | 6.2 | 20:27 |
| 2020-21 | TOR | 56 | 1 | 13 | 14 | +23 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 2.1 | 21:33 |
| 2021-22 | TOR | 82 | 4 | 24 | 28 | +20 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 68 | 5.9 | 21:19 |
| 2022-23 | TOR | 58 | 2 | 12 | 14 | +10 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 58 | 3.5 | 21:13 |
| 2023-24 | TOR | 78 | 1 | 25 | 26 | +17 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 1.9 | 21:43 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 908 | 56 | 292 | 348 | +84 | 294 | 10 | 3 | 12 | 994 | 5.6 | 22:14 |
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
Seventy-eight games in Toronto, 1 goal and 25 assists, 21:43 a night and plus-17. He took 49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,445 minutes, the 48th percentile, and his ice went 70-64 against an expectation of 61.67-63.11.
That is an average share and a very good result, which is the shape of most of his fourteen seasons. He arrives in Chicago as the only defenceman on the roster who has recently played on the right side of the puck, and the club is paying for the habit rather than the ceiling.
The Finesse Game
His first pass is early and to the correct side of the ice. There is no hesitation in it and no wasted turn, and 292 career assists across 908 games have been built almost entirely on getting the puck moving north before the forecheck arrives.
He took 52 shots all season and 1 went in. Eight per cent of his attempts came from inside 20 feet and 69 per cent from beyond 40 — this is a man who shoots because the play requires a shot, not because he wants one.
The Physical Game
He is 6-2 and 187 and defends by arriving first rather than by arriving hard. Forty penalty minutes in 78 games is a moderate rate and most of it is a stick.
He does not win the wall against heavy forwards and never has. The defending is anticipation, angle and an early stick, and at 34 there is no reason to expect anything else to appear.
The Intangibles
Fourteen seasons, 908 games, a fourth-round pick who became a top-pair defenceman in Calgary and then a reliable one in Toronto. He has played 22:14 a night across his whole career and has never been the problem on a blue line.
On a club with a nineteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old on the left side, a man who makes the correct simple play every night is worth more than the points suggest.
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
- 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.
- durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“His first pass is early and to the correct side of the ice.”
“He does not win the wall against heavy forwards and never has.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,445 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 53rd 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: 70 for, 64 against. Expected: 61.7 and 63.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 46 points above where the report does. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 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 · 78 games
- Top speed
- 21.1 mph
- 26th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.15 a game
- Distance
- 2.87 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.3 mph
- 28th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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 with TOR · 1445 minutes at five-on-five
- Jake McCabe11%
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
- TOR took 52.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 2.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,445 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morgan Rielly | 48.6% | 50.5% | 52.1% |
| Auston Matthews | 53.5% | 47.0% | 59.0% |
| Tyler Bertuzzi | 52.9% | 47.9% | 57.6% |
48.6% together, 50.5% for him apart and 52.1% for Rielly apart. Rielly 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
72 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 59 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.