On Jesper Bratt's Status as a Top-15 Winger in the NHL

The 26-year-old has continued to cement himself as a top winger in the NHL after yet another strong campaign.

This season in particular, I’ve noticed an uptick in hatred for who has been the Devils’ most consistently great player — Jesper Bratt. The arguments against him are the typical ones you’d see when perusing social media — he’s too “soft,” "too small,” not “gritty enough” — but those are and always have been ridiculous qualms against one of the league’s best players by laymen who don’t really understand how the game works.

No — Bratt is, and has been for several years, a top-15 winger in the NHL, and it’s time he garners the respect he deserves as a player.

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Bratt really burst onto the scene in his breakout 2021-22 campaign, one in which he sported a stat line of 26 goals and 47 assists for 73 total points in just 76 games. It was a particularly impressive breakout because he did it alone for about half the season — that was the first of Jack Hughes’ shoulder surgeries. I, like many, assumed it was just a flash in the pan and he’d come crashing back to earth at some point, but his game only took it up a notch from there.

In the Devils’ record-breaking 2022-23 season, he had yet another 73-point campaign, this time scoring 32 times and assisting on 41 goals. Last season was where things really took shape for the 26-year-old, who broke the point-per-game threshold with 83 points in his second-straight full 82-game season. This year, he’s already potted 73 points in just 66 games, an 82-game pace of 90 points.

I got into a tiff on Twitter the other day when someone cited Bratt as a “secondary assist merchant” because of the fact he “only” has 18 goals but has 55 assists. When it was pointed out that Bratt is tied for 8th in the NHL in primary assists, ahead of the likes of Leon Draisaitl, Zach Werenski, Sidney Crosby, Jack Eichel, and Aleksander Barkov, the argument shifted to just “assist merchant.”

I’m not sure the person arguing that understands what exactly assists do — without those assists, secondary or not, the Devils don’t score those 55 goals he assisted on. Through and through, it was a ridiculous back-and-forth I never thought I’d have to explain.

Bratt has always been a playmaker-type player. His shot is still a weapon to be sure; he’s been a plus-finisher for the majority of his career with the biggest exception being this season — he has scored 18 goals on 21.86 individual expected goals (ixG) in 2024-25 — but he has always excelled more at puck distribution. His microstatistical profile matches up with the eye test there:

via AllThreeZones

Across the board for shot assists and passing, Bratt profiles anywhere from above-average to outright chart-breaking. He is producing 14.10 primary shot assists per 60 minutes — passes leading directly to shots on goal — which is good for third in the NHL behind Nathan MacKinnon and Leon Draisaitl. In terms of scoring chance assists — passes leading directly to scoring chances — Bratt ranks second in the NHL behind MacKinnon. That’s pretty damn good company to be in.

In particular, Bratt excels at getting tough passes through traffic; saucer passes through legs and sticks, passes from behind the net, passes while he himself is in tight coverage, passes to high-danger areas from along the boards, etc. I mean, the guy has compilations dedicated to his playmaking on YouTube. I suggest you go take a look — few players in the league can execute those plays on a consistent basis like Bratt does.

Where I would have previously called him a true dual threat between his shot and his passing abilities, he’s settled into more of a Mitch-Marner-for-Auston-Matthews kind of role with his partner, Jack Hughes. This makes sense, obviously, as Jack is a volume shooter who has turned himself into one of the premier scorers in the NHL. Like Marner, Bratt focuses more on giving Jack chances but, when Jack is out with injury (like he will be for the rest of the season), Bratt, like Marner, sees an uptick in shooting and will likely score more goals for it. One major criticism I saw of Bratt was that he had a stretch of hockey where he had three goals in 20-some games (he also had 20+ assists in that stretch and contributed more than a point per game, but what do I know), and that solely happened because he was doling passes off to Jack rather than attacking the net himself. That’s quintessential hockey sense and moldability as an elite player.

Then comes his playdriving — bringing the puck from zone to zone and “driving” play forward — which too is in the upper echelon of the league.

via AllThreeZones

He is yet again above-average-to-elite in all zone entry statistics. The only player on the Devils who enters the offensive zone more on a per-hour basis is J. Hughes, and the difference is marginal — 24.64 times to 24.22. Among all forwards in the NHL, this ranks quite favorably:

via AllThreeZones

Sure, it isn’t quite as good as his playmaking metrics, which rank top-five in the league, but you also have to factor in that Bratt has played the vast majority of his time this season with the only player on the team with better zone entry statistics than him and still produces these elite numbers. Without Jack on the ice, Bratt becomes much more of the player in the top-right.

This dominance in the microstatistic world has lead directly to unbelievable on-ice results, of course. According to HockeyViz, with Bratt on the ice, the Devils are producing 28% more expected goals per hour (xGF/60) than league average, and that offense is coming from practically all areas of the offensive zone:

via HockeyViz

The counter-argument there is that he’s played the bulk of his season with inarguably a better player in Jack, but the counter-counter-argument is that his isolated impact directly contributes toward a 14% higher-than-league-average offense, too. Half of that 28% is Bratt in isolation. Out of the 146 forwards with at least 800 minutes of 5v5 time, Bratt ranks 25th in xGF/60. When you remove the centers from that crop, Bratt jumps all the way to 10th. By all accounts, he’s been an elite, elite force offensively for years, and 2024-25 is no exception.

I’ll be the first one to admit that his defensive play has been a point of pain this season — he’s largely struggled to prevent chances in his own zone this season. The only part of the defensive game he truly excels at is turning puck retrievals into successful zone exits.

via AllThreeZones

Outside of that, there isn’t a whole lot to love about his own-zone play, at least in this season. In previous campaigns, there were surefire signs of life and defensive aptitude, but that has seemingly dissipated in the new system employed by HC Sheldon Keefe.

Looking at other top wingers, though, that’s par for the course. Sure, there are the elite two-way guys — Kirill Kaprizov, Mitch Marner, and Sam Reinhart, to name three — but there’s a reason those two are in conversation for the best winger in the NHL. Practically all other wingers widely regarded around the league as top-ten are relative liabilities in their own zone. Is anyone going to tout the defensive aptitude of Nikita Kucherov? David Pastrnak? Artemi Panarin? Mikko Rantanen? Either of the Tkachuk brothers? No, nor do they have to be. They’re all regarded as the cream of the crop and they’re all poor players in their own zones.

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Those are all surefire names that I would personally rank ahead of Bratt, but after that, things get a bit dicey. William Nylander is better, as is Kyle Connor, but I’m not sure there are bona fide “better wingers” than Bratt beyond them. You’d have to come up with five wingers not listed above to push him out of the top 15, and I’m not sure you’d be able to.

Regardless, the point is, particularly within the Devils’ fanbase, Bratt deserves more recognition and tire-pumping for his truly elite game. There’s nothing as exhausting as seeing hordes of uneducated hockey heads waving the anti-Bratt flag on social media — it’s tired and flat-out incorrect. He is, by all accounts, a star, and should be treated as such.